PLEASE NOTE: The Reality TV World Message Boards are filled with desperate
attention-seekers pretending to be one big happy PG/PG13-rated family. Don't
be fooled. Trying to get everyone to agree with you is like herding cats,
but intolerance for other viewpoints is NOT welcome and respect for other
posters IS required at all times. Jump in and play, and you'll soon find out
how easy it is to fit in, but save your drama for your mama. All members are
encouraged to read the
complete guidelines.
As entertainment critic Roger
Ebert once said, "If you disagree with something I write, tell me so, argue
with me, correct me--but don't tell me to shut up. That's not the American way."
"And I am very concerned that if we continue to cast our courts and juries as scapegoats for our abject failure as individuals, families and communities to govern our impulses and ambitions sensibly, both rights will become yet another of my generation's victims - by - default. "
I agree that the fault doesn't all lie with the courts and juries, but I do feel that a lot of what is wrong with the jury/court system and how it works does sometimes make it more likely people won't govern their impulses and that people feel more and more that the only way to get justice at all of any kind is vigilante justice (which is what I see as part of the push to we gots to arm everyone because the courts won't do the job).
I, will likely never be on a jury. As a scientist I look at the forensic data with too much understanding of the nuances and will form my own opinion of the data rather than what either lawyers wants me to believe the data means. With a Ph.D. the other juries may look at me as an expert and may choose to agree with me rather than the hired experts. So I can't be trusted to do what the lawyer wants, I can't be on a jury.
I also follow the news so will fail any "don't no nothing about the case" standard.
Now occasionally one of my kind do get on juries, but seems more the Grand Jury where we only get one side and we are only asking is there enough data to go to trial, not is there reasonable doubt in what the data actually proves. After all scientists generally have pretty high standards for does this data actually prove what you want it to prove.
Although I'm sure launching into a discussion of exactly why eyewitness data is way less certain than the DNA (which is one of those geeky obsessions of mine, all the myriad ways our brains fool us into thinking we saw something that wasn't really there) probably won't make me more likely to be a juror if they ever ask anything that would get me started.
We get pissed off at what the juries decide, but how they are selected, IMO, all too often makes it almost impossible you will get wisdom out of them. So we set them up to fail and be scapegoats.
Add to that I'm shocked that some of the lawyers I see on the televised trials (I only hope the trials that aren't entertaining enough to get gavel-to-gavel coverage are better) scored well enough on the SAT to get to college much less scored well enough on the LSAT to get to law school. I would think that law firms hiring people for doing trial law would try to find someone with some tiny amount of emotional intelligence, but apparently they only want people who have no clue how people operate and mistake gimmicks for persuasion and confrontation for the sake of confrontation for reasoned argument.
Now it may be the only lawyers they can find for these televised trials are DAW's who are more concerned about getting on the evening news than the law or doing right by their client, or the people they are supposed to represent.
The problem I have is in the rush to arm everyone to the teeth (with how some of the laws are being rewritten in some areas) and the rush to make sure everyone knows that good guys with guns get to kill any bad guys they want without a chance of being prosecuted (all the stand your ground and the gun means you never have to retreat or do something other than shoot first), is not likely to reduce the number of people shot in this country.
Yep, most people are careful gun owners who keep them locked up so the kids can't get at them, or the dogs can't shoot them (way too many stories of dogs stepping on guns and shooting their owners) and would never use the thing when angry beyond reason. However, we aren't all that level-headed or wise and we have a lot of yahoos that I wouldn't trust to know when to use a water pistol getting people killed in some spectacularly stupid ways or because they were in a momentary snit.
p l a c e h o l d e r t e x t g o e s h e r e - p l a c e h o l d e r t e x t g o e s h e r e - p l a c e h o l d e r t e x t g o e s h e r e -
p l a c e h o l d e r t e x t g o e s h e r e - p l a c e h o l d e r t e x t g o e s h e r e - p l a c e h o l d e r t e x t g o e s h e r e -
p l a c e h o l d e r t e x t g o e s h e r e - p l a c e h o l d e r t e x t g o e s h e r e - p l a c e h o l d e r t e x t g o e s h e r e -
p l a c e h o l d e r t e x t g o e s h e r e - p l a c e h o l d e r t e x t g o e s h e r e - p l a c e h o l d e r t e x t g o e s h e r e -