One idea that has stuck with me for the past two days is that may be the make up of the jury needs to change. We have lived with the accused gets a jury if his/her peers but somehow that feels to me as if it leaves the victim woefully underrepresented during the trial process.
May be we need a change to where the jury is made up of equal parts jury of peers of accused and the victim...? Thoughts? Suggestions?
I can't follow the blog per se, but I can still comment :D. If we were to add jurors from the peers of the accused and victims I fear the Justice system will see more Hung trials, because it removes the "objectivity" random jury pools strive to maintain. I unfortunately have no thoughts to contribute to how we might change the jury, but if I think of some I'll re-comment.
ReplyDeleteAlan I agree with you but may be we need to re-evaluate the whole process, not allow hung juries as an option, allow the alternates to break a tie maybe?...
DeleteThe jury doesn't always get all of the information from the case. If you have a jury made up of the victim/defendent's friends/family then it would be like the hatfields and mccoys in that courtroom. Completely unbiased. Z got off without any charge. Scott free in the eyes of the law. He pursued the guy when authorities told him not to. If anything, the prosecution failed to do their job of presenting enough evidence and convincing the jury.
ReplyDeleteJames, I wasn't thinking that the jury should be made up of family members but that the jury be of peers of both the defendant and Victim. For instance. If three of those jury members in the Trayvon Martin case had been African Americans ages 18-25. Maybe the outcomes that we see in our justice system would be more fair. This set up would apply to all situations not just trials with a racial slant.
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