Jury duty over the past 2+ weeks

[dkp]

While we were unable to consider the penalty during our deliberations, I truly wish that Michigan had the death penalty and that we would have been allowed to submit this as our recommendation to the judge.

Murder is a crime, whether committed by a felon or by the State. No-one has the right to take a life. Killing killers to show that killing is wrong doesn't make a lot of sense, does it? It appears that Michigan, at least, realizes this.

Murder is the taking of an innocent life. State-sanctioned capital punishment is quite different. The goal is not to show that killing is wrong, it is to punish someone for an action they took. We obviously disagree on this.

[oldenough]

Murder is a crime, whether committed by a felon or by the State. No-one has the right to take a life. Killing killers to show that killing is wrong doesn't make a lot of sense, does it? It appears that Michigan, at least, realizes this.

I agree with you on this point Pat, It always seems strange to me that a nation that is built on "certain beliefs",( I use this terminology so as not to have this thread shut-down by bringing in a forbidden subject.) will quite happily break one of it's sacred tenets by allowing it's government to sanction murder. I say this although I personally am in favour of topping any convicted murderer, rapist or child molester....whatever the circumstances. But at least I can't be accused of hypocrisy my beliefs (or lack of) allow for it.

[sputnik]

A good friend of mine is a local dlstrict judge. His court had a problem with an individual who was trying to duck jury duty. The notarized letter the guy (actually his wife) sent to the court is good example of how not to avoid jury duty - although it worked in the long run. The letter is displayed in the story at the link below.

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/years/2009/0430091jury1.html

[skonopa]

I got called up once for Jury duty.

At least where I worked at the time, they did give us paid "jury/witness leave", so it is not like I am out any money to serve on a jury. Also had to serve as a witness once as well (car accident - the one where the guy slammed into the back of my car while I was helping some lady get her car unstuck out of a ditch).

Anyway, the jury trial that I actually got called up on was a child molestation case. It ended up being a mistrial because it turned out one of the ladies on the jury knew, and were friends with, the grandparents of the victim. The lady felt bad about it, but I told her that she did do the right thing, plus we had no idea who the victim was or what she looked like, since it was never brought up during the Voir Dire phase. What surprised me is that they did not have any "back up" jurors to replace this lady. At least I ended up with a free day off of work, especially as the weather that day was gorgeous.

Yeah, it can be a pain to serve on a jury, but at the same time, I was actually kinda excited about it, as I wanted to see first hand just how a trial worked and played out. May not be as exciting as some of the "court drama" that you see on TV, ala "Law and Order", but still pretty fascinating to see nevertheless, regardless what ones opinion may be of our justice system.

[laager]

...we never even got to the voir dire stage before the defendant declined a jury trial.

Not sure I understand you. A Voir Dire is essentially a trial within a trial and it is for legal argument to be presented and resolved in the absence of the jury. Most trials do not require a Voir Dire. The ones that do will simply have the jury eating sandwiches in the jury room oblivious to the legal arguments going on in the courtroom.

[dkp]

What surprised me is that they did not have any "back up" jurors to replace this lady.

That is surprising. Our jury originally consisted of 14 members. Trial, day one before we even get rolling one of the jurors informs the judge that he feels he cannot be unbiased about the case. He didn't state which side he would be biased for/against, but the judge excused him after taking him to task for not taking the several opportunities offered him beforehand. We lost another juror to an illness leaving us with 12. If 14 went through the entire trial, two would have been excused at the end. What a bummer that would be...

[dkp]

Jury convicts man in housemate's beating death

by Bryn Mickle | The Flint Journal

Friday May 22, 2009, 7:48 PM

FLINT, Michigan -- A jury didn't buy a man's claims that the son of a former Flint police chief killed his housemate two years ago.

Dana M. Sebastian, 46, was found guilty Friday of first-degree murder for the Feb. 26, 2007 slaying of Kaneco A. Parson.

Parson was found beaten to death with a sledgehammer in the garage of Sebastian's Grand Blanc Township home.

Sebastian's attorney had claimed that Sebastian witnessed the killing but said the deed was carried out by two of Parson's friends, one of whom was JaQuan Dudley, the son of former Flint Police Chief David Dicks.

Dudley was shot to death in an unrelated incident last year.

Parson, 21, had been renting a room from Sebastian at the time of his beating death.

Prosecutors portrayed Sebastian as a drug addict who killed Parson so he could rob him of crack cocaine.

But Sebastian's attorney, Dennis Snyder, told jurors that Sebastian and his son were threatened with death if Sebastian told anyone about the slaying.

After his arrest, however, the former Chrysler accountant allegedly told an inmate at the Genesee County Jail that he had done the killing, according to testimony in an earlier hearing.

Jurors deliberated for about two hours Friday afternoon before reaching the verdict.
Genesee County Prosecutor Davd S. Leyton said Sebastian had a dark side that turned him into a cold-blooded killer.

"This was a brutal murder and the jury saw through (Sebastian's) fabricated story and his feigned attempts at appearing meek and harmless when he testified on the stand," said Leyton in a written statement.

Snyder could not be reached for comment.

Sebastian will be sentenced to mandatory life in prison at 1:30 p.m. June 30.

[skonopa]

...we never even got to the voir dire stage before the defendant declined a jury trial.

Not sure I understand you. A Voir Dire is essentially a trial within a trial and it is for legal argument to be presented and resolved in the absence of the jury. Most trials do not require a Voir Dire. The ones that do will simply have the jury eating sandwiches in the jury room oblivious to the legal arguments going on in the courtroom.

Cribbed straight from Wikipedia (I know, I know, but it does have the most convienient explaination)...

Voir dire (IPA /vw?r dir/) is a phrase in law which derives from Anglo-Norman.

• In origin it refers to an oath to tell the truth (Latin verum dicere), in other words to give a true verdict. The word voir (or voire), in this context, is an old French word meaning "truth". It is unconnected with the modern French word voir, which derives from Latin videre ("to see"), though the expression is now often interpreted by false etymology to mean "to see [them] say".
• In the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and sometimes in the
  U.S. it refers to a "trial within a trial." It is a hearing to
  determine the admissibility of evidence, or the competency of a witness
  or juror.^[1]
• In the United States, it now generally refers to the process by which prospective jurors are questioned about their backgrounds and potential biases before being chosen to sit on a jury.
  It also refers to the process by which expert witnesses are questioned
  about their backgrounds and qualifications, in order to potentially
  give an expert opinion in court testimony. As defined by Gordon P.
  Cleary: "Voir Dire is the process by which attorneys select, or perhaps
  more appropriately reject, certain jurors to hear a case."^[2]

I don't know how it works in Norway (If I recall, that is where you said you are at/from), but that boldened part above is indeed how "voir dire" works in US law, at least from my experience with it.

Than again, I am only a software engineer with a little bit of business law experience. Perhaps an actual US attorny that know more about this can chime in.

EDIT: Reading this again, I see you are correct in your initial statement, but the bold part is the type of "Voir Dire" that 'Mighty Favog' was refering to, as the phase during jury selection before the actual trial.

[Travis In Austin]

Why are you barred? I have never heard of that. Where do you practice? In Texas, California and Nevada lawyers are selected all the time. Now it is true they often get struck by one side or the other, and it is pretty easy to get excused if you want to, some jurisidictions even provide for an automatic exemption, but I never heard of a lawyer being barred from serving on a jury. I guess that could come about if attorneys in the jurisdiction really wanted to get out of having to serve and got some sort of legislation passed.

Travis

[Coytee]

I doubt if I ever will serve with my current employment, almost ALL the attorneys in a 40 miles radius of my office is, one way or another, a client of my company.

You don't run a brothel do you? [:|] []

[oldenough]

I doubt if I ever will serve with my current employment, almost ALL the attorneys in a 40 miles radius of my office is, one way or another, a client of my company.

You don't run a brothel do you?

Now that is funny...[]

[Mighty Favog]

I doubt if I ever will serve with my current employment, almost ALL the attorneys in a 40 miles radius of my office is, one way or another, a client of my company.

You don't run a brothel do you?

LOVE IT!!

It's a court reporting company.

Our city did have a former mayor turned TV news anchor pay for such services with a check. ( can you say JERRY SPRINGER!!!).

[Mighty Favog]

The judges summoned the jury candidates and were all put into the separated room, there were about 25 of us. The defendant was given the option to let the judge hear his case or, if he had planned on using his "mentally incompetent" argument as his defense, would let a jury hear the case.The voir dire would have been the selection/rejection of jurors through a series of questions from both attorneys in front of the judge. I've had to video tape and process the steno for quite a few of those.

In my case, virtually every attorney in this area is client of mine so I could be considered biased towards the good of my company to continue to gain this attorney's business and not my true belief of a decision.

[laager]

Why are you barred?

The principal reason is that it is the judge that instructs the jury on the law and the judge's directions are absolute. If a lawyer is present within a jury then it undermines and potentially clouds the ability of the judge to instruct the jury on the law. When the jury doors are closed what is said behind them is not open for investigation. Hence, a lawyer as juror could influence the jury into not following the judge's interpretation of the law.

Where do you practice?

Admitted to practice in Australia, UK, NZ, Ontario, South Africa and Hong Kong. Traditional common law jurisdictions.

In Texas, California and Nevada lawyers are selected all the time.

Certainly doesn't increase my confidence in a legal system when practising lawyers are permitted on the jury.

[djk]

"I would be interested in an expansion of your comment on the Biblical prescription for capital punishment and your thoughts on why this case does not qualify."

First, I am not a member of any judeo/christian faith (although I was indoctrinated for many years as such). Yet I do believe the Bible has many important concepts for living.

'Thou shalt not kill' is actually 'thou shalt not murder', a large difference.

The Bible called for capital punishment (murder by the community) when certain conditions were met:

You had to say 'I'm going to kill Tom/Dick/Harry', subsequentially you were told that this was not appropriate, and you went and did it anyway. The subsequent killing had to be witnessed by multiple parties (otherwise another person could have killed him and you would be blamed).

Felony murder is an interesting concept.

I am a resident of Iowa. There is a person here that was convicted of felony murder for speeding. The police officer clocking his speed from the air had a heart attack, and died (from either the heart attack or the subsequent plane crash). The law says the speeder was guilty of felony murder. As far as I know he will probably not get out of prison before he dies.

I just purchased the Kubric film Clockwork Orange (a novel by Anthony Burgess). The present seems to be headed in a direction even worse than Burgess, Orwell, etc, ever envisioned.

Not to seem inhuman, but 70% of all homicide victims have prior felony convictions. I'm sure that many of the 30% would have been convicted of a felony if they had been arrested and charged for serious prior crimes. The vast majority seem to be drug related.

We have a broken society. What we are doing doesn't work. If we don't do something different we cannot expect a different result.

[Islander]

'Thou shalt not kill' is actually 'thou shalt not murder', a large difference.

The Bible called for capital punishment (murder by the community) when certain conditions were met:

You had to say 'I'm going to kill Tom/Dick/Harry', subsequentially you were told that this was not appropriate, and you went and did it anyway. The subsequent killing had to be witnessed by multiple parties (otherwise another person could have killed him and you would be blamed).

Felony murder is an interesting concept.

I am a resident of Iowa. There is a person here that was convicted of felony murder for speeding. The police officer clocking his speed from the air had a heart attack, and died (from either the heart attack or the subsequent plane crash). The law says the speeder was guilty of felony murder. As far as I know he will probably not get out of prison before he dies.

You may have heard of the New Testament. The hero of that text seemed to think that "eye for an eye" punishments had outlived their usefulness and appropriateness. He even talked one judicial group out of carrying out a sentence of death on an adulteress. Would you say He was misinformed or misguided?

You say that a death caused by a felon and a death caused by the State are somehow different. Someone ends up dead in both cases. Isn't the right to life considered "inalienable" in the US? Doesn't it violate the Constitution to take away the right to life of even a bad person, which a murderer certainly is?

As for that speeding/murder conviction, are you serious? A man driving on the road caused a plane crash and the death of the pilot? Kafka couldn't have thought up that one.

[Islander]

The inside of your head is the only place that's truly free. If we were to lose that freedom, there really would be nothing left...

[Daddy Dee]

It is an interesting debate as to whether the 6th commandment forbids all killing or illegal killing.

Just a disclaimer here, I am opposed on principle to capital punishment.

The debate on translating rtsh as kill or murder has been going on in Judaism at least since the 12th century. However, insisting that the 6th commandment prohibits all killing is inconsistent with the rest of scripture which provides for capital punishment. Also, Ecclesiastes says there is a time for all things in it's season, among them, a time to kill.

In terms of scriptural authority to kill and eat animals, this is not given until God makes covenant with Noah. Meat is the diet was not part of the original authorization.

One thing I find interesting about the eye for an eye thing. Thought it is often used as a justification for capital punishment, it was more about limiting revenge to proportional response. For example, you kill my brother, I am forbidden from taking my plan A which is to take our your whole tribe.

[Islander]

One thing I find interesting about the eye for an eye thing. Thought it is often used as a justification for capital punishment, it was more about limiting revenge to proportional response. For example, you kill my brother, I am forbidden from taking my plan A which is to take our your whole tribe.

I thought the whole point of the New Testament is that it supersedes the Old Testament and makes that kind of revenge thinking a thing of the pre-Christian past.

[Daddy Dee]

Islander,

I was not making a point about the purpose of the NT. As you mention, I actually was making a point about the revenge thing in our pre-Christian past.

In my view, the eye for an eye thing, is used improperly as a justification for capital punishment. IMO it's sort of a proof texting thing, to which I would reply,
"As I live, says the Lord, I do not desire the death of the wicked..." Ezekiel 33:11

just my $.02

Regarding ethics the NT does present a new standard (actually with greater accountability). It should also be remembered that the Christian canon included the OT and the NT. The "OT" was THE Bible to Jesus. If it was good enough for him....