Moving a Trial.... Means?
In all of the major cases we've covered, jury has been a deciding factor in the direction of the decision. In a couple of these major cases, I recall that the trial was moved from one location to another, something that had significant impact on the trial results. So I wanted to look into that.
In certain high-profile cases, the venue of the trial may be changed because of issues with publicity. If the trial judge believes that a jury from the community where a crime has been committed cannot be impartial, than it must be moved somewhere where it can. Unfortunately, this tends to raise new problems of its own.
One major case we learned about where the jury was moved was Rodney King. Although the brutal police beating of King occurred in downtown Los Angeles, the trial itself was conducted in rural Simi Valley nearby. The justification for this was the undoubtedly strong feeling that would emerge from black people in L.A. were they on the jury; as outrage was so widespread, perhaps it's true that L.A. residents could not have been impartial. But the white, rural, conservative, police-friendly jury, an inevitable consequence of the move, was not in any way impartial either. What is very clear is the effect a jury choice has on the result. In the second time around, with a diversified jury from L.A., the initial decision was "reversed", in a civil-rights sense.
(Something I also thought worthy of note was the assumption in the Rodney King case that an all-white jury, in a conservative rural area, somehow succeeded at the standard of "impartiality" more than a more diverse jury would. But then that raises the question - what kind of jury is really a good jury? Is the decision meant to serve justice, or to meet the needs of the community? And whose standard is the basis for justice?)
In Darlie Routier's situation, the movement of her trial also served to hurt. Like with King, her trial was moved to the conservative, rural city of Kerrville, with people who tended to be less sympathetic towards beautiful, liberal women like her. Only because her trial was moved had she been convicted, largely due to her character assassination in front of the biased jury.
Only in OJ's case did the move out of Brentwood work for his favor, and that may have been in part because of the length of his trial, as they said in the documentary. Because the trial was predicted to go on for so long, the majority of qualifiers for the jury were women, black, and unemployed or in some kind of non-working position.
Personally, I think it makes sense to make a jury that is racially and socioeconomically representative of the nation as a whole. 15% black population means 15% of the jury is black. 60% white population means that 60% of the jury is white. Wealth should be fairly represented as well. Maybe I don't fully understand the mechanisms behind jury selection, but it seems to be an inevitably biased process in either direction.
In certain high-profile cases, the venue of the trial may be changed because of issues with publicity. If the trial judge believes that a jury from the community where a crime has been committed cannot be impartial, than it must be moved somewhere where it can. Unfortunately, this tends to raise new problems of its own.
One major case we learned about where the jury was moved was Rodney King. Although the brutal police beating of King occurred in downtown Los Angeles, the trial itself was conducted in rural Simi Valley nearby. The justification for this was the undoubtedly strong feeling that would emerge from black people in L.A. were they on the jury; as outrage was so widespread, perhaps it's true that L.A. residents could not have been impartial. But the white, rural, conservative, police-friendly jury, an inevitable consequence of the move, was not in any way impartial either. What is very clear is the effect a jury choice has on the result. In the second time around, with a diversified jury from L.A., the initial decision was "reversed", in a civil-rights sense.
(Something I also thought worthy of note was the assumption in the Rodney King case that an all-white jury, in a conservative rural area, somehow succeeded at the standard of "impartiality" more than a more diverse jury would. But then that raises the question - what kind of jury is really a good jury? Is the decision meant to serve justice, or to meet the needs of the community? And whose standard is the basis for justice?)
In Darlie Routier's situation, the movement of her trial also served to hurt. Like with King, her trial was moved to the conservative, rural city of Kerrville, with people who tended to be less sympathetic towards beautiful, liberal women like her. Only because her trial was moved had she been convicted, largely due to her character assassination in front of the biased jury.
Only in OJ's case did the move out of Brentwood work for his favor, and that may have been in part because of the length of his trial, as they said in the documentary. Because the trial was predicted to go on for so long, the majority of qualifiers for the jury were women, black, and unemployed or in some kind of non-working position.
Personally, I think it makes sense to make a jury that is racially and socioeconomically representative of the nation as a whole. 15% black population means 15% of the jury is black. 60% white population means that 60% of the jury is white. Wealth should be fairly represented as well. Maybe I don't fully understand the mechanisms behind jury selection, but it seems to be an inevitably biased process in either direction.
I fully agree with your idea that a jury should represent the nation as a whole. I too was confused on why moving the trial made the jury less biased. It all the situations where the trial got moved it seemed to be just as biased as where it originally was going to be held. I am not exactly sure what could be done to try to make the jury as unbiased as possible but moving the trial, at least from what I've seen, does not seem to be very effective. Also wondering who chooses where the trial gets to be moved to...
ReplyDeleteI agree! When we learned about each jury, I was surprised at how the lack of diversity within the juries. The point of having a jury made up of normal people is so that they can represent the decisions that our nation as a whole would have made, and moving the case around to skew the population who will participate in the jury is unfair to the defendant! I agree with your idea of the jury needing to have the same distribution that America has of people, to make the results fair and unbiased.
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