Jury bias UPDATED


A Pagan lawyer disagrees with my take on jury selection. Here is my response.
Fiacharry over at Cypress Nemeton disagrees with both Jason Pitzl-Waters of the Wild Hunt Blog and myself on the jury selection in the Scott Dyleski murder trial.

I first linked to the story here. Mr. Pitzl-Waters wrote about it here.

I'm not a lawyer. Most of my legal experience was during my Corporate Clone days when one of my hats was in HR. And I will be the first to admit that my thinking about jury trials is colored by my readings on jury nullification.

I do agree with this much.

When it comes down to it, there are really only two general ways that are fair to select a jury. The first would be a truly random selection, and whatever you get is what you get. That would be fair, but most people wouldn’t like to spin the wheel quite that much. The other choice is to have some process by which jurors are reasonably selected and anyone with unfair biases somehow weeded out.

Obviously I have never helped select a jury. But why should the lawyers have the ability to disqualify someone for jury duty?

My question is, who decides what is and is not an unfair bias? Since I don't have any other examples to draw on early this morning, take myself.

Obviously I am Pagan, which "reveals" a bias right there. But at one point I was studying to be a Christian minister, which "reveals" another bias. I'm pretty interested in history, especially American history. But at the same time I'm a firm believer in the individual right to choose as long as you accept the consequences. That is two more biases "revealed." As it happens, I am straight. But I do not believe that it's only healthy for everyone to be heterosexual. More bias "revealed."

By the reasoning of unfair bias, I would either be a blessing on any jury I served on, or a curse.

I maintain that the only way that someone can be unbiased is if they had no knowledge of the subject. Is that really who we want on a jury? Even if it was your life hanging in the balance?

One thing that I don't want to be overlooked in this discussion is that jury selection of this type is a fairly new process. I can't remember the citation off the top of my head, but the attorney's power over the jury selection was expanded about the same time that judges stopped telling jurors they had to power to judge not only the accused but the law under which the accusation was made.

In many states, knowledge of jury nullification alone is enough to disqualify you from serving on a jury.

You would be too biased.

UPDATE - I misspelled Fiacharry's name. No excuse, sorry.

Jason Pitzl-Waters responded here. Be sure to read the comments.

— NeoWayland

Posted: Thu - July 27, 2006 at 04:58 AM  Tag


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