>>>>I take it you don't view it as a duty of all able citizens?
>>>
>>>Quite the contrary and I'm surprised you would read that into what I said.
>>>
>>>This was intended as sort of a "serious joke." The sad part is that so many do not regard jury duty as a civic duty. The result is juries not as competent as what would result if so many qualified people didn't shirk their civic duty.
>>
>>Jury duty is designed as a "circuit breaker" in our system to prevent tyranny by the prosecution and judiciary.
>>If you can't get 12 people off the street to go along with "the law" it won't get enforced.
>>
>>As I understand it, it still works that way in England.
>>The only question that jurors are asked is:
>>"Can you be fair to both the Crown and the Defense?"
>>
>>In the US system, the lawyers use Voir Dire (jury selection questioning) as an exercise in jury stacking.
>>If you can choose the jurors, and choose which facts those jurors see, you can end up enforcing laws that many people do not agree with.
>>
>>If you pulled 12 random people off the street, your odds of getting drug possession convictions would be very low.
>>The odds of randomly getting 12 random people to ALL impose the death sentence is extremely low.
>>
>>Yet, we just let the judiciary hand-pick jurors that are "death qualified."
>>Same with enforcing drug prohibition laws that a large percentage of citizens would never enforce on their fellow citizens.
>>
>>The point of a jury trial is not to manage to get 12 citizens to rubber-stamp decisions by judges.
>>
>>Yet that is what happens - with judges and lawyers able to go through hundred of people to cherry pick jurors, and with judges able to exclude true and undisputed evidence, they can get any verdict they want.
>>
>>For an example of why it is important to maintain the independence of the jury, look at the mess that was the Ed Rosenthal case.
>>http://jurygeek.blogspot.com/2006/04/ninth-circuit-recognizes-juror.html
>>Seven jurors heard the facts that had been kept from them - and were on the courthouse steps holding a press conference a few days after the case to blast their own decision.
>>
>>One of the jurors said:
>>“Last week, I did something so profoundly wrong that it will haunt me for the rest of my life. I helped send a man to prison who does not belong there.”
>>
>>Ultimately, the 9th circuit court recognized that juror independence had been interfered with and reversed the decision.
>>Ironically, it was some bad advice from one of the juror's neighbors that the 9th circuit based their decision on.
>>The real problem with that case is that the judge and prosecutors were able to suppress very true and very relevant facts from the jury - that is the travesty of the Ed Rosenthal case. They prevented the jury from doing it's job, up to and including jury nullification.
>>
>>My point is that people don't talk a lot about the erosion of fundamental rights and responsibilities of us as citizens and jurors.
>>There is no way to discuss it without sounding like a paranoid nutjob.
>>
>>But people do recognize that the present system is designed to reduce their fundamental responsibilities to fellow citizens into a rubber stamp and are refusing to participate as jurors.
>>
>>Can you blame them?
>
>What amazes me is that the public generally assumes that if a person was found guilty, they really are. Having watched numerous court cases and the messy appeals for evidence not provided or testimony refused, not to mention how juries just get bored and tired and want out and many miss half the stuff that is presented out of boredom or lack of proper brain function, I am always in doubt these days...

I'm sure it's impossible to know but I am curious what percentage of convictions are incorrect. 1%? 5%? Of course that would be 1% or 5% too many but a completely different animal than, say, 50%. I would hate to think it's so high that one would question the validity of any guilty verdict. A lot of the time the person is clearly guilty -- caught in the act, witnesses, confession, evidence.

Interesting that we are discussing the legal system when the top story on cnn.com this morning is about a Mexican who was put to death in Texas overnight. He was convicted for his part in the 1993 gang rape and murder of two young girls in Houston. Apparently no issue at all about his guilt. The issue is he was denied access to the Mexican consulate until after his conviction, a clear violation of international law. It was so bad that even President Bush tried to get his home state to stay the execution until that issue could be addressed. Texas insisted on doing it right away and the Supreme Court upheld their right to do so. (That sounds really funky but I don't know enough about the decision to say any more). There is a bill in the Texas legislature to address the issue, which affects the man who was executed and 15 or so others. The reason given was that the legislature isn't in session again until January. So they couldn't wait until January? The guy was incarcerated for 15 years, it's hard to see the urgency of not waiting 5 more months.