Reflections on Jury Duty
http://ehudadams.wordpress.com/2007/06/22/reflections-on-jury-duty/
- Real lawyers aren’t as good as the ones on TV. Neither lawyer really spoke that well. They both stumbled for words and had quite the difficulty forming clear, neat questions. The prosecution had two minute questions to get a yes or no answer. Then he had other questions that were so short and general that the judge yelled at him to narrow it down.
- People are very open minded. Almost everyone on the initial jury assembled were very open minded and willing to hear out the evidence. Even when there was a question about prostitution, one man said he didn’t really think it was wrong. I don’t know if they were all bending over backwards to get on the jury, but they were very eager to convince people that they came in with no biases.
This leads to a question: are biases wrong? I’m not so sure they are. It is a very post-modern thing to say that you have no biases or convictions. You are a clean palette ready to be painted on. If you came in to the room with any preconceived notion of what is right and what is wrong, then that is a bad thing?
