An acquaintance sat in a jury for a locally-notorious rape/murder trial.
After the trial was over, I asked his opinion. The chap was in his later 30s or early 40s. Mature. Intelligent. He hid that since he wanted at least one fair-minded person on the jury.
I asked him to consider his fellow jurors, the entire trial, all the proceedings, etc. then to give his opinion……
Did the suspect, the defendant, have to prove guilt or innocence?
Sure, reasonable doubt and all that BUT….. what’s the REALITY, at least in the one trial he participated in (it lasted around 2-1/2 months).
He said he would have to ponder the recent past and would get back to me.
The next week we sat in the night class classroom and he gave me his answer.
The guy had to prove his innocence, he said. He added that with other juries it could be different but the jury he was a part of, it was necessary to prove innocence….. in the circumstances of that point in time.
He said he forced himself to believe in innocence and tried to keep an open mind.
The defendant was not a man of wealth or means and the classmate added he felt the defense was lacking in comparison to what a wealthier person would likely have had available.
This was several years ago and I just can not recall the outcome. There were two suspects tried separately with one committing suicide in jail awaiting trial who had made statements accusing the one tried of assisting in the crime but… evidence came out later the dead suspect had a grudge against the one he accused of assisting that existed long before the crime, casting some doubt as to actual guilt but, many were quick to grasp onto the accusations.
In some ways, my classmate proclaimed, the guy was tried in the mass media before the trial ever started. The jury was not sequestered and were exposed to the media and its effects despite orders from the judge to avoid the media.
It’s a shame the legal system is designed to maximize the income of those earning their living from that system.
The adversarial system is not the best method for weeding out the guilty from the innocent. If the defense and prosecution had the same goal… prove guilt while weeding out the innocent, assuredly there would be fewer innocently convicted folks released years later when the innocence is finally proven.
Consider the innocents STILL rotting inside those horrid prisons.
And for those with empathy for others… a moment of silence for those falsely executed. Murdered, possibly, to maximize the wealth of lawyers and increase the power of lawyers wearing robes, sitting above the commoners basking in their power as their brethren below have the nerve to use a sub-par method of guilt/innocence determination that, at worst, can send an innocent person to their death.
Why do the masses allow the few to spit upon us this way? Brainwashing and indoctrination, of course.
The “legal system elites” are a curse upon us. But, try to reform the legal system, the self-policed monopoly rewarding the few at the cost of the many, and if that attempt had any chance of success I fear the jack-booted thug enforcers owned and operated by America’s elites would appear to protect the status quo.
The status quo that permeates all aspects of the USA that rules us, controls us.
And, in the meanwhile, diversity divides us, minimizing any chance for the masses to band together and fight our mutual enemies; the elites and their lackeys and minions.
