Prompt Cast
The Role and Controversies of Juries in the Legal System
TLDR Juries play a crucial role in the legal system, with their decisions based on the idea that important matters should be entrusted to peers. However, jury selection, non-unanimous verdicts, and pretrial detention raise concerns and controversies within the system.
Timestamped Summary
00:00
Juries are made up of 12 random people with no expertise in law or law enforcement who are asked to decide a person's guilt or innocence, which may seem like madness, but it is based on the idea that important decisions should be entrusted to peers rather than a bureaucracy.
05:56
Juries are an old concept that originated in England and were brought to the United States, and while not every case requires a jury, it is considered a right in criminal and most civil cases.
11:00
In the criminal justice system, defendants have the option to waive their right to a jury trial and instead have a judge handle the case, while the jury is responsible for determining the sentence, except in capital punishment cases where the jury decides whether or not to impose the death sentence.
16:03
The jury foreperson is responsible for managing the jury, representing their voice, and interacting with the judge, while grand juries differ from regular juries in that they hear multiple cases over months but are not sequestered.
23:17
In civil cases, if a settlement cannot be reached, the case goes to trial, but most cases are settled because one side usually has a stronger legal standing; in criminal cases, many people choose to cop a plea because they can receive a much lower sentence than if they were to go to trial and be convicted.
28:19
Pretrial detention is often used as a tool to pressure defendants into taking a plea deal, even if they are not necessarily a flight risk or a risk to the community.
33:25
Jury selection, also known as voir dire, is a controversial process where attorneys try to select jurors who will be sympathetic to their case and may use tactics such as asking unusual questions, scraping social media, and observing body language to determine potential biases.
38:48
During jury selection, attorneys use tactics such as asking unusual questions and observing body language to deselect potential jurors until they end up with 12 people left plus alternates, and they can use peremptory challenges to eliminate jurors without giving a reason, although this practice has been challenged in the Supreme Court.
44:03
Non-unanimous verdicts are becoming more common in misdemeanor or civil cases, with the American Bar Association noting that this trend has been increasing since 2019.
49:26
Non-unanimous verdicts in felony cases were required in Oregon and Louisiana until 2020, when the Supreme Court ruled that the Sixth Amendment does require unanimous verdicts, but only Oregon granted new trials to those previously convicted non-unanimously.
54:48
Juries either reach a verdict by taking a straw poll and working towards a unanimous vote, or by examining all the evidence together and coming to a conclusion, and it's rare for one juror to change the minds of the rest of the jury, but about 10% of the time the jury will end up with a different verdict than what they initially thought.
59:57
The episode concludes with a listener mail segment discussing the nostalgia of Nerf toys, specifically the Nerf hoop and Vortex football.
Categories:
Society & Culture
