Wednesday, February 20, 2013

Chickens, Roost

Open Borders: how that's working out for you, m'lud?
The jury reached deadlock after sending the judge three separate notes containing 10 questions which suggested they were “struggling” with the most “basic concept” of trial by jury.
They included a question about whether they could reach a verdict based on something which was not presented in court, and whether the defendant’s “religious conviction” to follow her wedding vows of obeying her then husband, Chris Huhne, would be reason enough to acquit her of committing a crime with him.
Mr Justice Sweeney said he had “never come across” anything like the jury’s response in nearly 30 years of working in criminal courts.
Gosh, it's almost like the proper functioning of an advanced democracy requires that the citizenry hold a common set of assumptions about how society works.... kind of like how those fascists on the right always said it did.

2 comments:

JuliaM said...

The Twitter meme #PryceJuryQuestions summed it up nicely...

Trevor said...

I wondered whether these notes were the work of some philosopher manqué - an unemployable student or a French waiter, perhaps - until I saw details of the twelve good persons and true and came to the same conclusion as you, DJ.

Perhaps the jury system is done for - after all, this whole 'objective evidence' thing is so last century, not to mention oppressively Eurocentric, with not even the option to have cases decided by goat entrails.