Juror Misconduct

Juror misconduct leads to mistrials, fines and huge emotional cost, so how are courts dealing with it? Reads the headline, so I read the article.

For a better description than I can give, read Richard Dawkins “Unweaving the Rainbow” , the chapter titled “Barcodes at the bar”, but better to read the whole book.

I reached the following sentences: “She cites another recent example of a trial involving a car driven by a police officer. A juror with a background in mathematics independently measured the ground clearance on a similar make of car, to reach his own conclusion about what happened. "He believed he knew better than the evidence that had been provided by the court," Ms Hall says.” And, thinking of my mathematics background, reflected that instinctively I would think of measuring (“Management Measures”) and at the very least arithmetic devices for making a good estimate.

I once used parking bays as a unit of measurement in a court argument, and had my reasoning thrown out because I hadn’t used metres or yards and feet, something that a lawyer can understand.

That I used standard-sized car bays as a unit forbade the lawyers from using the numeric measurements as a ratio, so although the landlord claimed to have re-surfaced the entire parking lot, where my seventh-floor photographic survey of the lot showed that only a third had been resurfaced, was thrown out. The landlord went on to claim the high expense in favour of yet another annual rental increase.

And yes, I am still bitter about the stupidity of the court system.

In the example given above, I took digital photos of numbered bays, printed them out, and tried to use them as evidence (only 17 of 51 bays were re-surfaced) but no; lawyers and magistrates are not capable of thinking in any units when it comes to ratios.

There are valid points to be made about searching the internet for facts. Big Bubba Joe-Kay of Slippery Rock Arkansas is possibly the world-expert on gamma radiation’s effect on embryonic salamanders, but I doubt it; whereas Richard Dawkins ought to be studied in matters affecting life’s DNA; for sure!

But getting facts from Richard Dawkins is getting facts via the Internet, and courts use Big Bubba Joe-Kay of Slippery Rock as their lowest-common denominator, instead of striving for accuracy.

Finally (for me), the expert testimony is given by experts chosen by the lawyers because, the lawyers claim (and for once I believe them) that they don’t know enough about the gamma radiation’s effect on embryonic salamanders. The trouble here is that the Arkansas lawyer will choose you-know-who whereas the UK lawyer will choose Richard Dawkins, and in Slippery Rock AR, everyone can understand you-know-who, but Richard Dawkins accent is beyond comprehension.

Sigh.

Search