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So many juicy points! So I hope you won't mind if I tackle them a bit at a time or that I've rearranged your text a bit (keeping its context intact).
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 …
Now occasionally one of my kind do get on juries, but seems more the Grand Jury where … we are only asking is there enough data to go to trial, not is there reasonable doubt … After all scientists generally have pretty high standards for does this data actually prove what you want it to prove.
… As evidenced by the fact that I’ve twice served as a juror in a criminal matter, I am obviously not one of your kind. Too, the fact that I’ve known too many nincompoops with PHDs in my lifetime virtually guarantees that I wouldn’t be the first of the group on the bandwagon. But with that modest – two-trial – foundation as my frame of reference:
One of the first instructions that the jurist sitting in a criminal matter would give you, a juror, is that the opening statements and closing arguments presented by the lawyers representing the State and the Defense – the two opportunities that those attorneys are given to attempt to persuade you to adopt one or the other of their opposed conclusions regarding the testimonies of both the trial’s ‘fact’ and ‘opinion’ witnesses – are not evidence. So, while you are sworn to carefully receive, consider and weigh the testimony promulgated from the courtroom’s witness stand and from its exhibits, you are perfectly free to ignore the statements and arguments of the lawyers trying the case. Entirely. But don’t snore.
And, in charging you with the duty to carefully consider and weigh the evidence placed before you, the trial judge will encourage you to bring your own life experiences to bear as you decide what degree of credence and what relative importance to attach to the individual testimonies of the witnesses. To both the evidence offered as fact and the evidence offered as expert opinion.
So, after carefully receiving, considering and weighing the evidence presented to you by the trial’s – usually opposed – expert witnesses, you are free to accept/adopt or to disregard/discard any or all of their assertions and/or conclusions. And you are perfectly free to announce your decisions regarding expert testimony during deliberations with your fellow jurors and to argue the case for those decisions: so long as you and your fellow jurors confine your discussions to the parameters of the testimony that you – and they – heard from the stand.
However, your oath would require that neither you, nor any other juror, conduct undocumented, independent experiments and/or interject unsworn, independent specialized information or opinion into your deliberations.
If you can’t, you can’t, of course. But the only person whose ‘wants’ are properly the concern of a sworn or potential juror is the trial judge. And if you believe that you can faithfully execute the bench’s mandates, there is no reason why you can’t be an excellent juror. You would certainly be a welcome addition to any jury panel. Provided, of course, that you survive the competing pleas (strikes for cause) and preferences (peremptory strikes) of the Prosecution and Defense during voir dire.
But that, given this, might be difficult:
I'm sure launching into a discussion of exactly why eyewitness data is way less certain than the DNA … probably won't make me more likely to be a juror.
However, if I were a trial attorney opposed by a Prosecution or Defense armed with really compelling eyewitness testimony and I had only far less than compelling – adequate but not transparently conclusive – DNA results with which to counter it, I would move heaven and earth to seat you.
Note: It is amazing how easy it becomes, in the insular world of a courtroom, to honor your pledge to follow the trial judge’s instructions to the letter.
Note: The source of extracurricular ‘expert testimony’ can be surprising. For instance:
In one of the two trials in which I served as a juror, the question was whether or not the admittedly-inebriated and ultimately-beaten-to-a-pulp defendant was guilty of resisting arrest and/or of assaulting two very substantial WV State Troopers. And, for reasons too convoluted to summarize here, the pivotal testimony improperly submitted to the jury during its deliberations was the thoroughly convincing observations and opinions of a thoroughly professional tow truck operator.
Voila! Mistrial!
And as far as I know, not one of the eleven other members of the jury panel, or the trial judge, or the defendant, or the prosecution or defense attorneys, or the numerous witnesses – all pretty impressed but also all pretty pissed – inquired, before or after the fact of our wasted days (or months), about his academic credentials ...
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