So do you think it's completely impossible that you would be part of the 2/3rd that found the fake suspect guilty? I don't think basic comprehension or reasoning prevent you from falling for these kinds of arguments, and rather than try to limit possible jurors we should just bar unscientific evidence.

Who makes the rules for the aptitude? Who decides if it's scientific or not, and what the limit is (p .1 or .001, study design, etc)?

The people running the system makes the rules. The general attitude is to treat the law enforcement side more favorably than the defendant, to the point that they are basically assumed guilty from the start.

I sat in court once for 3 days as a potential juror. I was the last person that was not selected for the jury. There is a process like what you describe called voir dire. Both sides have an opportunity to interview jurors and can ask to eliminate some. In the case I watched there was a potential juror that had recently become a citizen and was very interested in being a juror, but she was also not a native English speaker and was clearly not following everything that was going on - both sides wanted her gone right away.

You still get a jury of citizens from the local community, which is the point.

The process is a good one but it's not like what was described. Each side gets a chance to remove some jurors, not a chance to insure all jurors in the pool meet a criteria, and removal is based on how much the attorney thinks you'll hurt their chances not based on if you'll be able to accurately interpret the case. I was also the last person struck in a case involving IT once the prosecuting side found out I worked in IT. Looking at the case results the prosecution lost the case for reasons that would be apparent to anyone that understood how IT systems worked.

To be clear I think the selection process is a good one (or at least I think it's better than other options I've heard) it's just not the same thing as the GP was proposing.

I disagree, both sides have the opportunity to ask potential jurors a lot of questions. The answers to those questions can clearly illuminate someone's comprehension and reasoning - they definitely did in my experience. Now each side does not necessarily get all of the eliminations that they want but that is part of the process.

The case I watched was a domestic violence case. Both sides were asking potential jurors about their knowledge of bruising and the way bruises change/develop over time. One of the potential jurors was an older Engineer from an aerospace company you've heard of, his answer included explaining that the most interesting problems that he deals with include how one handles the unknowns of a given project/situation. He gave a clear indication of his reasoning and thought process, the prosecution dropped him like a hot rock.

Its not a jury of your peers if its a jury of only the sharpest or most educated people.

> Its not a jury of your peers if its a jury of only the sharpest or most educated people.

I think the ‘jury of your peers’ thing is meant to be in the sense of ‘all men are created equal’. They don’t, I presume, intelligence test the defendant and if they score lowly, screen the jury to admit only dumbasses.

The op was advocating for 'basic comprehension and reasoning test' which I think voir dire covers and in my experience did cover. The current process is more about eliminating bias than screening for intelligence, which seems right.

I think a jury should be representative of the community, all of the community.

If the case is engineering-heavy, I’d expect [at least] one side to bias the jury away from containing engineers/scientists. If it’s heavily reliant on medical testimony, at least one side will try to exclude doctors, etc.

I think that’s inherent in the adversarial system (where each lawyer is advocating for their client’s interests), but I also think it sucks.

I’d be interested in seeing a stats about key evidence type vs. juror preferences on each side vs. eventual case outcome. I bet you could predict guilt reasonably well by looking at what sort of jurors the defence tries to exclude.

"I think a jury should be representative of the community, all of the community."

But you are getting a random, not a balanced sample of the community - one person might get a jury of stock brokers, the other might be stuck with 13 guys that are local drunks and never finished school.

First to separate the disagreements. You open by disagreeing that the process requiring jurors to pass a certain comprehension level doesn't exist today and close by disagreeing that the current "jury of your peers" process shouldn't be such a thing. Apart from being self conflicting claims (it can't both be the process used today and be against the process used today) they are 2 separate discussions.

In regards to the first disagreement GPs proposal wasn't "a process that optionally allows an attorney to strike some jurors they find have low comprehension" it was "there really ought to be some basic comprehension and reasoning test for jurors." as in a hard requirement to have some level of comprehension regardless if the attorneys wish to strike a juror based on this fact.

In regards to the second disagreement you aren't guaranteed to a jury of your peers in the US you are guaranteed to an impartial jury. Jury of your peers was part of common law and guaranteed e.g. high class people would only have juries of other high class people and is not part of US law. A "special" or "blue ribbon" jury like the GP proposed are allowed to been used as deemed necessary by the court in many states and actually by the Supreme Court itself in it's only jury trial (they drew from a pool of merchants) they are just not mandated for every trial.

Again I do side with your opinion that special juries shouldn't be the default but that's not what is under question.

Where I live, the state/county defines eligible jurors as registered voters and/or licensed drivers over 18. So 'peers' meaning eligible voters in your community/county. And yes, the system is rightly more about eliminating bias. The process of voir dire is the opportunity for both sides to apply their own test. Also for special cases, and even not so special cases, jury questionnaires are an option[0]. These jury questionnaires can ask all kinds of questions to uncover bias and certainly involve basic comprehension.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_questionnaire

That is likely how your state selects jurors but again it's not because you have a right to a jury of your peers (for any definition of peers). In the US the only right is to an impartial jury, which is indeed what voir dire tries to do, which has been ruled to be possible even with pre-filtering the juror pool.

Jury questionnaires are made to provide a background for the attorneys during voir dire not as an aptitude test, as such they do not have an objective pass/fail score rather subjective information to allow attorneys to try to form the most impartial jury they can out of the pool. While the attorney could try to make an assumption of comprehension level based on the responses in the questionnaire

1) The attorney still has to consider lack of comprehension a negative thing for their chances at the case

2) The attorney has to be willing to use strikes for this reason vs other uses such as removing blatantly biased jurors

3) Even when both of the prior hold true the number of perceived "fails" may be higher than the number of allowed strikes. Therefore the ability to strike some from the pool for comprehension level is not the same as the pool being pre filtered for comprehension level.

To be clear the GP proposal is the universal application an additional comprehension test one has to pass to be part of the pool prior to voir dire, not just that someone with low comprehension is allowed to be struck for that reason.

Think of the proposal being like if your state randomly chose anybody instead of pre-filtering for eligible voters and GP proposed "we should filter out children and etc from the pool" with your response being "voir dire does that". Voir dire in that case may allow for the possibility of some of those people being filtered at the cost of a less filtered qualified jury of adults but it wouldn't be a replacement for pre-filtering. The same is true of the proposal on a minimum comprehension pre-filter, whether you agree with the pre-filter or not it's not the same as having the ability to filter some people in voir dire.

If you ask me, neither the prosecutor nor the defense attorney should be the ones striking jurors. I don't have a full solution to that, either, but it seems like voir dire is one way attorneys try to stack the deck, often times by excluding the most qualified jurors.

But, I agree - it must first and foremost be a jury of the accused's peers - but that doesn't mean "man on the street style average joe" necessarily.

> Looking at the case results the prosecution lost the case for reasons that would be apparent to anyone that understood how IT systems worked.

Can you share any details, even in a very abstract way, on what it was?

I'm curious as to how weak their case was - because if it was something as asinine as thinking that filesystem file modification dates are trustworthy or that any activity in the Windows Event log proves that a human user was physically sat at the machine then I'd like to know why the prosecution didn't have someone on their side to tell them they didn't have a case so they wouldn't waste time with a trial?

LOL. Two things here. If this is a criminal case the prosecutor will have an expert who testifies that these things are immutable, and then as a defendant you will not have enough money to have your own expert to refute it. And anyway you'll never find a lawyer that knows anything technical about computers to even come up with these sorts of technical challenges. Plus the judge hates nitpicky challenges to evidence like this, so he'll fuck you for even bringing them up.

> In the case I watched there was a potential juror that had recently become a citizen and was very interested in being a juror, but she was also not a native English speaker and was clearly not following everything that was going on

Trust the system.

Give her a few more years. The good ol’ US of A will make her a jury-duty dodging, full-blooded American out of her.

Tongue-in-cheek aside I’ve disappointed not to be selected for jury duty thus far.

I disagree with the jury system but as I understand it American jurors are supposed to reflect society.

If you only want smart people you leave it to the judge.

In fact jury selection is notorious for discarding potential jurors with intelligence, critical thinking, legal awareness, or domain expertise. Jurors reflect the part of society least qualified to be making these decisions.

Attorneys do not want thinkers, they want predictable cogs in the court machine.

> In fact jury selection is notorious for discarding potential jurors with intelligence, critical thinking, legal awareness, or domain expertise. Jurors reflect the part of society least qualified to be making these decisions.

Jurors get dismissed based on whether or not one side feels they decide in their favor or not. That's it.

So whoever thinks their case is weakest when viewed intelligently (i.e. ability to handle subtletly, nuance, complexity, rational over emotion, science, statistics) is going to need to get those intelligent people off the jury.

When there's no agreement I suspect the less educated are favored though.

I'd believe a juror getting dismissed for knowing statistics and being persuadable by logical arguments, before I'd believe a juror being dismissed for being in a demographic who favors police and emotional arguments.

Depends on which side is moving to dismiss that particular juror and what finding in their favor would require.

Just mentioning FIJA can be enough to land you in jail.

That's not true. Jury nullification is legal (both talking about it and carrying it out), even if some judges and prosecutors wish it otherwise.

I can't find any supporting documentation-- so take this as hearsay-- but I recall a man being arrested for handing out FIJA pamphlets in front of a courthouse at the Southwestern Justice Center in Riverside, CA.

You have the right to not have a jury. There are some downsides. It's harder to win an appeal; jury nullification is off the table; plenty of judges are biased or uninformed. Your lawyer can't manipulate a judge as easily as a jury. Still, if I had to defend myself against some emotionally charged claim whose defense relied on legal technicalities, I might prefer a bench trial to a bunch of idiots who couldn't get out of jury duty. If the potential jury of "my peers" were going to be biased against me for reasons of religion or race or culture, I'd be more inclined to let a judge decide.

> a bunch of idiots who couldn't get out of jury duty

Maybe they are not idiots, just regular folks who take their civic duty seriously.

Yeah, that was too dismissive. I do think there's a problem with juries in that the pool of people is narrowed to those who both want to and are able to serve. Some jobs will pay employees who have jury duty, but many will not. Some people have backup caregivers for their dependents, but many don't. I'm not interested enough to look for statistics on it, but I would be surprised if juries aren't primarily composed of a narrow subset of social classes, like upper middle class professionals, retired people, the childless, and the unemployed, or some similar categories. It should be hard to get out of serving and jurors should be compensated in a way that eliminates the financial burden without becoming an incentive in itself.

Do you really want to force people to make a decision? They will try to end the case as soon as possible correct outcome or not.

From my experience some people just want to convict and are happy to have the power to punish. Most want to get out of there. You might get someone trying to find anything not to convict. What you end up with is some people happy to not work, others eager to close the case because they are not getting paid.

Personal feelings decide outcomes. I know this person is not guilty but this guy who loves the free lunches won't ever change his mind and I am worried about my mortgage.

Just regular retired folks and folks with government jobs that pay folks who are on jury duty.

But now you have to model a judge's incentives to cooperate with the justice system, given that the DA's office and the police have worked to bring a case this far.

What we need is a right to a multi-judge tribunal.

Agreed, although impractical due to a shortage of judges. You shouldn't have to rely on making it to an appeals panel to have your fate decided by more than the whims of a single person.

About those judges…

Wait... there are smart judges?!

What's worse is that judges are elected and it creates perverse incentives.

So I sat on a 6 week felony jury and had low expectations but was pleasantly surprised - fellow jurors took it very seriously, the judges instructions are clear and written at a layman’s level and the “presumption of innocence” dominated.

Anecdotal but it really gave me faith that juries do a pretty good job.

I was on a grand jury and we were all a very cynical bunch. They presented a bunch of cases that boiled down to "person we don't like talked back to the police" and our jury refused to indict them. In one case, it was painfully obvious that the police officers testifying were flat-out lying. Their story changed from sentence to sentence. I think even the prosecutor thought that continuing to prosecute this particular case would be a career killer.

Eventually the ADAs caught on that our group asked too many questions, and just carefully ran out the clock on our two week grand jury session. Cases we were halfway through hearing mysteriously disappeared. Apparently the other two juries that met during our two week cycle had to stay late every day, while we got dismissed early.

It's one of those things where the system is designed to be good (23 randos get to decide if the cops are full of shit before you even get indicted, and you don't have to be very smart to see that sometimes the cops are full of shit), but The System turned it into something bad for no good reason. I guess if people aren't committing felonies, we don't need assistant district attorneys, and then the people that already do that job have their career progress reset. So they are forced to play into a broken system and make up very tenuous felonies for their own personal career gain. It's sad. Someone should do something about that.

(I wonder if there should be an after-the-fact non-binding review board. Look at all the cases that were prosecuted over a given year, and just have a group of experts gut-check them. If a lot of cases seem like bullshit, dock the numbers for the DA's office so they suffer at election time.)

That's an interesting report because I've seen statistics [citation required] that Grand Juries vote to indict in 99.9% of cases. I was locked up for 8 years in a county jail and I only saw one instance where the grand jury did not return a "true bill", and the Constitution in that case then allows the prosecutor a second chance by then doing a prelminary hearing in front of the judge instead. At which point the judge immediately found probable cause.

The case was that someone said they had seen, from the street, the suspect walking around in his basement with a gun in his hand. They called the police. 47 officers arrived at the house, but the suspect had left earlier. They found him several blocks from the house with no firearm on him and arrested him for Unlawful Use or Possession of a Firearm by a Felon (he had a previous conviction from years prior). The judge took pity on him and offered to let him plead to Attempted Possession of a Firearm to get him to plead guilty, which he did and only had to do 6 months in prison for a crime he didn't actually commit. (It was shown that it was impossible to see into the basement from where the reporting citizen was stood.)

I think that some care should be taken on statistics like "99.9% indictment rate". If you can control the number of cases in the denominator, then you can make it match the numerator. (I'm implying that if the grand jury is looking bad, you can close the case before they indict.) In that case, anything not equal to 100% just tells you that someone doesn't know how to play the numbers game... and in 2021, EVERYONE knows how to play the numbers game.

The fact that your joury went home early while others stayed late, is this information available to the defense?

Probably not. It operates as an on-call sort of thing. You show up when you're summoned and sit in a room until there are details of a case to present. You hear maybe 20 minutes of testimony for a case, sit around for 2 hours, then hear 10 minutes of another case, etc. for 8 hours a day for two weeks. At some point, there is enough evidence to vote. (I actually don't remember the exact process there. I think the ADA leaves the room, and some number of people have to vote to indict, and then we fill out a piece of paper with the results. I wasn't the person that actually filled out the paper, I was just the backup if that person was absent, which they never were.)

All the grand jury members are ordinary citizens with no special education or training. The state sends you a letter, you show up at the time and place they say, and there is no "jury selection" that excludes jurors. You're truly just a pool of random people from the county.

(This is the New York State system. The federal system is different. And some states don't even have grand juries. It's kind of an unusual thing.)

To more directly answer what you're getting at; yes, I felt like something a little fishy was going on. It is all conjecture from chatting with the other members of the jury while sitting around bored for 8 hours a day. Some of them were very good at collecting information about what goes on behind the scenes. The cases should probably be randomly load-balanced between juries, without the prosecutor knowing that one of them has difficult people on it. I would venture a guess that there are rules around this, and then there are "the rules" on how it's done in real life, and people are generally fine with "the rules". So it goes. Ultimately, the grand jury is the people's power over prosecutorial aggression. You, as one of those people, have to decide what to push for and how the jury should be run. My group had a lot of people in it that very strongly pushed back against the power of the state. Some other groups might not have that. That's the luck of the draw, I suppose.

I'll also say that we were not being difficult for the sake of being difficult. They presented some cases that were very clear-cut, and we easily agreed to indict based on the evidence that was shown.

Of course, they make it easy to indict because only the prosecutor gives the "facts" and there is noone there to rebut it. In my cases they actually failed to allege some elements of the offense in one, which would technically make it impossible to indict because you cannot say for certain if a crime was committed (but I checked and they say as long as most of the elements were alleged then it is close enough to be legal), and in both cases the police lied about which county the crime was alleged to have been committed in, so the grand jury did not know they had no legal authority to indict.

Here's a recent example. It seems as though the Kentucky prosecutor rigged the grand jury so that they wouldn't opt to charge the police with a crime. Pretty chilling. This is the same justice system that over-charges defendants so they plead guilty even if they are innocent. Our justice department is out of control and exists to serve itself. Without faith in the law, our country is lost.

Breonna Taylor grand jurors say there was an 'uproar' when they realized officers wouldn't be charged with her death

https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/29/us/breonna-taylor-grand-juror...

Probably not. In Illinois where I am, at least, judicial matters are excluded from the Freedom of Information Act. You do have a free speech right to some judicial documents under the 1st Amendment to the federal constitution and possibly under a State constitution.

The transcripts of the actual grand jury session are "secret" but generally available to the defendant's attorney, but not the public.

Information on when a grand jury went home might not be restricted though, and might be available, if it was recorded somewhere.

To me, it just highlights that if you've never served on a jury, your opinion is merely prejudice against those who are (presumably) less credentialed than you are.

A jury of peers is a jury of citizens with no regard to their upbringing, education, rece, religion, or any other thing. Citizens.

you’ve just failed your own test, since you don’t understand how and why a jury works. if you did, you’d comprehend that the better solution is expanding juries, not testing jurors. i’ll let you work out why that would be the case, and perhaps come up with an even better option as a result.