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Re:Trial diary: A journalist sits on a Baltimore jury by torstenvl on Friday June 03, 2022 @09:05AM (#31607677)
Jury nullification isn't idiotic. It's the genius behind the system. It's the last bulwark of freedom against a tyrannical law. Read up on the Zenger trial for some history.

And "real countries"? I don't know what that's supposed to mean but I don't know of any other nation that has a stronger claim to being "real." Japan perhaps.

Re:Trial diary: A journalist sits on a Baltimore jury by adolph on Friday June 03, 2022 @09:36AM (#31608068)
> Jurors are idiots. None of em are legal experts

  ! expert != idiot

  expert != ! idiot
The rigamarole of a jury keeps the day to day system of justice in touch with a relatively representative sample of local humanity. Without that I could see it turning bad fast.

I was on a jury that did something close to nullification. Afterwards the prosecutor dropped by and chatted with us. It was helpful feedback for them about community standards (at least from the random sample we represented). In that situation we appreciated the role of vice cops in deterring lewd public behavior but considered a remote spot in the woods to not be public for that purpose no matter how much the prosecutor emphasized the location as a public park.

Were we the idiots? Maybe so, maybe not.

Re:Trial diary: A journalist sits on a Baltimore jury by jhgb on Friday June 03, 2022 @10:48PM (#31616472)
> ! expert != idiot

I'll just leave this here: https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext...

> one who has no professional knowledge, layman

"Idiot" quite literally means "not an expert", among other things.

Re:Trial diary: A journalist sits on a Baltimore jury by mschuster91 on Friday June 03, 2022 @08:34AM (#31607365)
Actually, you're wrong there - Germany uses a similar system on the first levels of the justice system [1]. However, we have crucial differences to the US:

- we don't have that ridiculous requirement of jurors having to lock themselves away for fear of getting a contaminated judgement [2]

- while we do allow participants to contest the jurors, it's rare for such motions to succeed, except if there is substantial evidence for bias

[1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sch%C3%B6ffe_(ehrenamtlicher_R...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_sequestration

Re:Trial diary: A journalist sits on a Baltimore jury by janeerie on Friday June 03, 2022 @12:09PM (#31610262)
Jury sequestration is pretty rare and only for super high profile cases.