California jury says Bayer must pay $2B to couple in Roundup cancer trial

Re:California jury says Bayer must pay $2B to couple in Roun... by scott_s on Tuesday May 14, 2019 @01:35PM (#19911657)

If I had to choose between the systems, I would choose the non-adversarial approach. There's a famous paper, "Land without Plea Bargaining: How the Germans Do It", https://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?arti..., where I first learned of the German system. That paper was written in 1979, and since then, Germany does have plea bargains (https://www.dw.com/en/german-court-upholds-plea-bargains/a-1...). But in the US, plea bargaining essentially is our criminal justice system.

I'm curious why you think it allows for more corruption than the US system. Something I find compelling about the German system is that the primary point is not to decide guilt or innocence of the accused, but to determine the truth. (See https://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/ilj/vol34/iss2/5/).

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Re:California jury says Bayer must pay $2B to couple in Roun... by JohnFen on Tuesday May 14, 2019 @02:01PM (#19912032)

> But in the US, plea bargaining essentially is our criminal justice system.

Plea bargaining in the US is, in my opinion, a corrupt practice.

> I'm curious why you think it allows for more corruption than the US system.

I didn't make that claim in the big picture, I was talking specifically about the the role of jurors in terms of evaluating the credibility of expert testimony.

My concern with the idea of "professional jurors" is that they represent an easy target for corruption in the form of coercion, bribery, etc. How can you ensure that a professional juror is actually impartial and fair? If jurors are always coming from the same pool of people, won't they develop relationships with prosecutors and the like that may influence their impartiality?

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