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Solice Kirsk
Jun 1, 2004

.
Should have linked a bunch of Twitter posts about how the public feels about his murder. Otherwise I just don't know what to think. How can I form an opinion if I don't know what XXXromperstomper69XXX thinks about a kid being lured and murdered by a couple of psychopaths?

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RNG
Jul 9, 2009

Have SK and TD3K on ignore so I'm not sure what happened here. Please let me know if it was thoughtful, well-considered discussion and not a bunch of dumb bullshit.

datajugend
Jan 15, 2010

:minnie: Cat Army :minnie:

Solice Kirsk posted:

Should have linked a bunch of Twitter posts about how the public feels about his murder. Otherwise I just don't know what to think. How can I form an opinion if I don't know what XXXromperstomper69XXX thinks about a kid being lured and murdered by a couple of psychopaths?

" No barfyman362..."

Trauma Dog 3000
Aug 30, 2017

by SA Support Robot

Please refer to me as TD3K going forward.

Namaste.

Caganer
Feb 15, 2018

RNG posted:

Eh, I've seen way tackier memorials/poo poo airbrushed on trucks. Memorial t-shirts confuse me, though, like... are you mourning the hell out of this person today or was there nothing else clean. I guess it boils down to different tastes.



Randaconda posted:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerard_John_Schaefer

Schaefer was a cop, convicted murderer, and suspected of being a serial killer in the 70s, the golden age of serial killers.

http://archive.tcpalm.com/news/form...-345577182.html

"After being turned down from the priesthood, Schaefer turned to law enforcement as a career, graduating as a patrolman at the end of 1971, at the age of 25." :cop:

Pirate Radar posted:

You can be reasonably confident in saying “a gun of this model fired those shots” because of variation in barrel patterns between gun models; matching bullets to individual guns is squishier and there have been false convictions that used erroneous ballistic evidence before. Unfortunately news reports and crime stories often don’t go into the small details like that so it’s hard to tell if “ballistic match” means “we know the bullets were fired from a Ruger Security-Six in .38 Special with a four-inch barrel and the suspect owned the same type of gun” or “we know the bullets were fired from this gun”.

Isn't it harder with a revolver since you don't recover the shell casing? So you'd probably just know the model of gun at best not THIS SPECIFIC gun?

Solice Kirsk
Jun 1, 2004

.
Can someone tell RNG that my post was just dumb bullshit please?

Phanatic
Mar 13, 2007

Please don't forget that I am an extremely racist idiot who also has terrible opinions about the Culture series.

The Lone Badger posted:

I'll grant physical problems with the stamping, but maintaining a numerical database and referencing it seems really easy?

The issue is one of false positives. There's just not that much difference between toolmarks, and millions of guns are sold each and every year. It's not a situation where you're going to query the database and get a matching gun, you're going to get dozens or hundreds, and the problem will just get worse with time. Couple this with the fact that all those little parts in a gun that go into making toolmarks? The firing pin, the extractor, etc? Those are all removable/repairable/replaceable. A firing pin is a consumable item. A barrel swap on most firearms takes about 30 seconds. Hell, you could change the marks a barrel makes on bullets by running a file down it. And then there's the little issue that guns change hands, sometimes legally, but other times not, and last a long time; a match you got on your database today could be of a 30-year old gun that's been through the hands of 10 people since it was originally placed in your database. And finally, ammunition varies, for any given caliber of round there are dozens of different varieties of ammunition, and the toolmarks left on each is going to have some variability. What are you going to do, test-fire the gun once with every single kind of ammo on the market for it when you're generate database inputs? What about handloads? Heck, there are guns that are easy to convert from one caliber to an entirely different one just by swapping the barrel.

Caganer posted:

Isn't it harder with a revolver since you don't recover the shell casing? So you'd probably just know the model of gun at best not THIS SPECIFIC gun?

Being able to say "It is this specific gun to the exclusion of all others," revolver or not, is CSI bullshit, and if investigators tell a court it works that way, they are *lying*. But yes, the existence of revolvers (and other guns that do not automatically eject spent brass, or a $5 brass-catcher) is another obstacle to microstamping.

Phanatic has a new favorite as of 03:03 on Mar 1, 2018

Pirate Radar
Apr 18, 2008

You're not my Ruthie!
You're not my Debbie!
You're not my Sherry!
I’m even more skeptical about ID’ing guns from a casing than I am about using the bullet. But theoretically you can get a match from either; in that sense yeah, a revolver takes away one possible data point because it keeps the shells.

Solice Kirsk
Jun 1, 2004

.
I think the Judge Dredd idea of imprinting DNA sequences on every bullet fired seems like a good idea. We can't be more than like 2 years away from that technology. Let's make it happen. Be a lot easier if we just find the bullet and go, "Oh, it's Jeff's bullet. Let's go arrest Jeff."

pookel
Oct 27, 2011

Ultra Carp
Found a Texas Monthly story I hadn't read before. Don't think it's been posted here: https://www.texasmonthly.com/articles/unholy-act

Caganer
Feb 15, 2018

Phanatic posted:

The issue is one of false positives. There's just not that much difference between toolmarks, and millions of guns are sold each and every year. It's not a situation where you're going to query the database and get a matching gun, you're going to get dozens or hundreds, and the problem will just get worse with time. Couple this with the fact that all those little parts in a gun that go into making toolmarks? The firing pin, the extractor, etc? Those are all removable/repairable/replaceable. A firing pin is a consumable item. A barrel swap on most firearms takes about 30 seconds. Hell, you could change the marks a barrel makes on bullets by running a file down it. And then there's the little issue that guns change hands, sometimes legally, but other times not, and last a long time; a match you got on your database today could be of a 30-year old gun that's been through the hands of 10 people since it was originally placed in your database. And finally, ammunition varies, for any given caliber of round there are dozens of different varieties of ammunition, and the toolmarks left on each is going to have some variability. What are you going to do, test-fire the gun once with every single kind of ammo on the market for it when you're generate database inputs? What about handloads? Heck, there are guns that are easy to convert from one caliber to an entirely different one just by swapping the barrel.


Being able to say "It is this specific gun to the exclusion of all others," revolver or not, is CSI bullshit, and if investigators tell a court it works that way, they are *lying*. But yes, the existence of revolvers (and other guns that do not automatically eject spent brass, or a $5 brass-catcher) is another obstacle to microstamping.

so to be clear i don't need to ditch the revolver after a murder if it's a common barrel length + caliber combo as long as i buy a different brand of ammo for the murders? i'm confused because so often on forensic files they say they "matched" a gun

Proteus Jones
Feb 28, 2013



Caganer posted:

so to be clear i don't need to ditch the revolver after a murder if it's a common barrel length + caliber combo as long as i buy a different brand of ammo for the murders? i'm confused because so often on forensic files they say they "matched" a gun

If you change the barrel and firing pin, the best they can present is “this gun is of a similar type”. Of course, you still have to be able to dispose of the parts you replaced in such a way they can’t be tracked back to you. The thing is, most of the perpetrators on those 30 min true crime shows are of the “unbelievable stupid” variety ruled by their passions. They typically don’t think of covering their tracks beyond “throw gun in field a block down the road.”

I’m of a similar opinion as to the viability of matching striations on a bullet or of case markings left by a gun. It’s based on subjective interpretation most of the time. However, it’s been accepted as evidence so many times that you’d have quite an uphill battle to discredit it.

ass frog
Feb 28, 2018

by Smythe

Phanatic posted:

The issue is one of false positives. There's just not that much difference between toolmarks, and millions of guns are sold each and every year. It's not a situation where you're going to query the database and get a matching gun, you're going to get dozens or hundreds, and the problem will just get worse with time. Couple this with the fact that all those little parts in a gun that go into making toolmarks? The firing pin, the extractor, etc? Those are all removable/repairable/replaceable. A firing pin is a consumable item. A barrel swap on most firearms takes about 30 seconds. Hell, you could change the marks a barrel makes on bullets by running a file down it. And then there's the little issue that guns change hands, sometimes legally, but other times not, and last a long time; a match you got on your database today could be of a 30-year old gun that's been through the hands of 10 people since it was originally placed in your database. And finally, ammunition varies, for any given caliber of round there are dozens of different varieties of ammunition, and the toolmarks left on each is going to have some variability. What are you going to do, test-fire the gun once with every single kind of ammo on the market for it when you're generate database inputs? What about handloads? Heck, there are guns that are easy to convert from one caliber to an entirely different one just by swapping the barrel.
you have wasted your life

The Lone Badger
Sep 24, 2007

Phanatic posted:

The issue is one of false positives.

I was referring to a hypothetical database of serial numbers, if microstamping both a) worked and b) was implemented.
A database of normal firing marks would be a nightmare, agreed.

Pirate Radar
Apr 18, 2008

You're not my Ruthie!
You're not my Debbie!
You're not my Sherry!

rear end frog posted:

you have wasted your life

I often feel like every moment of my life I’m not spending with a dog is wasted

PetraCore
Jul 20, 2017

👁️🔥👁️👁️👁️BE NOT👄AFRAID👁️👁️👁️🔥👁️

Pirate Radar posted:

I’m even more skeptical about ID’ing guns from a casing than I am about using the bullet. But theoretically you can get a match from either; in that sense yeah, a revolver takes away one possible data point because it keeps the shells.
Bullets deform when they hit stuff. It's way harder to get any sort of reasonable match off a bullet than a shell casing.

PetraCore
Jul 20, 2017

👁️🔥👁️👁️👁️BE NOT👄AFRAID👁️👁️👁️🔥👁️

Phanatic is being dumb bc he's arguing against being able to make a 100% match which IS CSI bullshit, but he's using that to argue that making a probable match is bullshit. Did you know that eyewitnesses accounts are notoriously faulty? Guess between that, forensics being pure bullshit as Phanatic says, and the fact that cameras don't PROVE anything because maybe someone just looked really similar, guess we can't solve any crimes at all! Gotta be 100% absolutely pure ironclad sure, and can't EVER build a case off of evidence strengthening other evidence, like a gun bought by a suspect being found at a crime scene with fingerprints 90% certain to be his on it and bloody clothes buried in his yard. No, that's just bullshit.

Obviously I'm being a bit of a dick here but forensic evidence not being a 100% surefire thing even when taking about DNA evidence because of potential degredation is like... a super known thing courts take into account. You're the only one acting like things have to be like CSI or be worthless. All the stuff you've been arguing about 'and the forensic scientists don't want you to know this!' is basic-level stuff I learned literally in my entry-level forensics classes and that I had known before. Are you like... okay??

InediblePenguin
Sep 27, 2004

I'm strong. And a giant penguin. Please don't eat me. No, really. Don't try.
The thing is in America we have jury trials where it matters less what "the court takes into account" than what a bunch of randos who didn't get out of jury duty believe about how things work, which is that forensics is super serial science like it is on tv

Bunni-kat
May 25, 2010

Service Desk B-b-bunny...
How can-ca-caaaaan I
help-p-p-p you?

InediblePenguin posted:

The thing is in America we have jury trials where it matters less what "the court takes into account" than what a bunch of randos who didn't get out of jury duty believe about how things work, which is that forensics is super serial science like it is on tv

Yeah, and a lot of probably guilty people are found not guilty because there’s no DNA evidence given in some cases, and those randos go ‘well, if there’s no DNA they couldn’t have done it.’ It cuts both ways.

Basebf555
Feb 29, 2008

The greatest sensual pleasure there is is to know the desires of another!

Fun Shoe

Avenging_Mikon posted:

Yeah, and a lot of probably guilty people are found not guilty because there’s no DNA evidence given in some cases, and those randos go ‘well, if there’s no DNA they couldn’t have done it.’ It cuts both ways.

Yea there's an argument for DNA as a detriment to the criminal justice system because it completely poisoned the jury pool so that they all think the be all end all of evidence is DNA. But there's no be all end all, there never has been. Proving someone guilty of a crime has always been about putting together a puzzle for the jury and showing them all of these pieces of evidence, allowing them to look at it all together within the full context of the known circumstances.

Typically cases that hinge on just one single piece of forensic(or any type) evidence are the most susceptible to appeal. Eyewitness testimony, confessions, DNA evidence, fingerprints, ballistic evidence, none of it is considered good enough to just hang your entire case on, you want to give the jury a full picture if at all possible.

Basebf555 has a new favorite as of 21:00 on Mar 1, 2018

Varkk
Apr 17, 2004

For a prime example of differing opinions of forensic evidence look in to the Lundy murders in NZ
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lundy_murders

Back story a man goes out of town on business. Comes home to find his wife and daughter brutally murdered. He is convicted of the crimes. Appeals, granted a retrial, second trial finds him guilty. In the first trial they presented evidence the murders happened at a particular time. Second trial proposes new time of death. Also in the second trial it is alleged a stain on his shirt is from human brain or spinal tissue. Defense argues the analysis was flawed and was actually from a sheep. Probably from a sausage had eaten earlier. I don’t think that particular method has been used in any other criminal trial.

Aleph Null
Jun 10, 2008

You look very stressed
Tortured By Flan

Varkk posted:

For a prime example of differing opinions of forensic evidence look in to the Lundy murders in NZ
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lundy_murders

Back story a man goes out of town on business. Comes home to find his wife and daughter brutally murdered. He is convicted of the crimes. Appeals, granted a retrial, second trial finds him guilty. In the first trial they presented evidence the murders happened at a particular time. Second trial proposes new time of death. Also in the second trial it is alleged a stain on his shirt is from human brain or spinal tissue. Defense argues the analysis was flawed and was actually from a sheep. Probably from a sausage had eaten earlier. I don’t think that particular method has been used in any other criminal trial.

The evidence in that case is dumb and stupid. How the gently caress could he be convicted twice?

Goon Danton
May 24, 2012

Don't forget to show my shitposts to the people. They're well worth seeing.

It's not unique though. Here in the US we killed a guy for having his kids die in a fire, based entirely on an "arson investigation" that might as well have been "consult the sacred chickens."

eating only apples
Dec 12, 2009

Shall we dance?
Yeah even to a layperson the Lundy conviction seems insane, they must have some real solid evidence to keep him behind bars (or they don't want to admit they made a mistake)

Phanatic
Mar 13, 2007

Please don't forget that I am an extremely racist idiot who also has terrible opinions about the Culture series.

PetraCore posted:

Obviously I'm being a bit of a dick here but forensic evidence not being a 100% surefire thing even when taking about DNA evidence because of potential degredation is like... a super known thing courts take into account.

Oh, wait, you were serious. I'll laugh even harder.

https://slate.com/culture/2018/02/the-cadaver-king-and-the-country-dentist-reviewed.html

quote:

In a story full of antagonists, the authors single out West, a charlatan of the first order. West got into forensic dentistry in 1982 after attending a conference presentation about identifying bite marks using ultraviolet photography. When he returned home to Hattiesburg, Mississippi, he recruited a colleague to sedate him and bite him in the thigh to test out the technique. He then enlisted assistants and local students to bite one another. From these “experiments,” West concluded he could identify marks left on skin from bites months earlier. The local paper wrote a flattering profile, calling Hattiesburg a “hotbed of scientific research.” At some point, West started a company called Dental Disaster Squad, and by 2006, he claimed to have investigated 5,800 deaths in and around Mississippi.

Over the years, his “expertise” metastasized, and he proffered opinions not only on bite marks, but also on gunshot reconstruction, wound pattern analysis, fingernail scratch reconstruction, trace metal analysis, video enhancement, pour pattern analysis, tool-mark analysis, cigarette burns, arson investigations, and shaken baby syndrome. West called his ultraviolet method the “West Phenomenon” because he could see what no one else could. He matched an abrasion on a murder victim’s body to a suspect’s shoelaces. He matched a bruise on the victim’s abdomen to a specific pair of hiking boots. He declared that simply by looking at a suspect’s palm, he could tell that the individual had been holding a particular screwdriver several days earlier. West likened his virtuosic talents to those of violinist Itzhak Perlman and once described his error rate as “something less than my savior, Jesus Christ.” As Balko and Carrington write, “West is either a master bullshit artist or an autodidact for the ages.”

The authors are being generous. West peddled unconscionable pseudoscience in court. Typically, a bite-mark examiner would take a plaster mold of the suspect’s teeth and then compare the mold to photographs of the victim’s skin. If the pattern sufficiently matches up, the examiner could exclude everyone in the world except the suspect. Or at least that’s how the theory goes: Bite-mark matching has never been scientifically proven. West’s practices in this already-scientifically-shaky field were even more dubious. In Brewer’s and Brooks’ cases, as in many others, West pressed a plaster mold of the suspect’s teeth directly against the victim’s skin. With this method, West could have been creating the bite mark he was then claiming to have matched. In one case, West even pressed a dental mold into the hip of a comatose woman. A forensic dentist and longtime West critic posted a video of the examination on his blog. “Tampering with the evidence on the skin is likely a crime,” the dentist later said. “But to create those marks on a woman who was comatose, and who hadn’t given consent, is also an assault.”

The courts are poo poo, absolute poo poo, at keeping garbage pseudoscience and outright scientific fraud out of the courtroom. Absolute 100% poo poo, and countless people have been loving imprisoned and died in prison because of it. A lot of this stuff is allowed not because there's been actual scientific demonstration that it works, but because way back in the day when things like phrenology were considered a science, these things were allowed into a court as evidence and we've simply presumed that they've worked all along. Research done to establish actual error rates and quantitative standards simply *has not been done* in many cases. The standard is supposed to be "beyond reasonable doubt," and a lot of courts really do let forensic "experts" testify that there's no chance they're wrong, that it's not a "probable match," it's a definite match to exclusion of every other gun/fingerprint/set of teeth in the entire world, and juries believe them and real people go to jail based on those claims.

If your forensic classes told you that bite-mark analysis, blood-spatter analysis, bullet lead analysis, microscopic hair analysis, were in any way meaningful and non-bullshit, you need to get your money back. Bite mark analysis in particular is a heaping pile of bullshit, the very foundational claims that make it a thing are *objective falsehoods*, and yet prosecutors still defend it:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...m=.121d7bb0d1c1

And judges still admit it:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...m=.ca13ff171973

And when the forensic community holding themselves out as "experts" in bite-mark analysis tried to actually scientifically evaluate their own field of expertise, they completely undercut it:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...m=.a6907d1034d8

What did they do then? Try to figure out how they were wrong? Take steps to undo the damage they'd caused to innocent people and to the criminal justice system in general? gently caress no, they tried to suppress their inconvenient results.

No, that this is total garbage is not a super well-known thing that courts take into account. Here's the fuckin' report from PCAST. Read it.

https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/sites/default/files/microsites/ostp/PCAST/pcast_forensic_science_report_final.pdf

quote:

As the chapter above makes clear, many forensic feature-comparison methods have historically been assumed rather than established
to be foundationally valid based on appropriate empirical evidence. Only within the past decade has the forensic science community begun to recognize the need to empirically test whether specific methods meet the scientific criteria for scientific validity. Only in the past five years, for example, have there been appropriate studies that establish the foundational validity and measure the reliability of latent fingerprint analysis. For most subjective methods, there are no appropriate black-box studies with the result that there is no appropriate evidence of foundational validity or estimates of reliability.

The Attorney General of the United States promptly circular-filed that report and announced nothing would change so far as the DOJ was concerned.

Phanatic has a new favorite as of 23:53 on Mar 1, 2018

InediblePenguin
Sep 27, 2004

I'm strong. And a giant penguin. Please don't eat me. No, really. Don't try.

Avenging_Mikon posted:

Yeah, and a lot of probably guilty people are found not guilty because there’s no DNA evidence given in some cases, and those randos go ‘well, if there’s no DNA they couldn’t have done it.’ It cuts both ways.

LMAO are you honestly and seriously responding to what is basically my desire not to let innocent people get railroaded by pseudoscience by saying that on the other hand if we don't let innocent people get railroaded then we're also, gasp, letting guilty people go free? once again, it is a basic moral tenet that it is better to let guilty people go free than to punish the innocent

Rev. Bleech_
Oct 19, 2004

~OKAY, WE'LL DRINK TO OUR LEGS!~

You can always tell when talking about criminal trials people who have never actually done jury duty for one because they never seem to fully appreciate the fact that juries are largely made up of people who are dumb as poo poo. Once was enough to assure me that, guilty or innocent, I never want a jury to decide anything for me.

During deliberation we had a dude go on an hourlong tangent about "what if he DIDN'T do it and <insert fantasy scenario>"; when the foreman got tired of it and said "look, is this something you believe? are you telling me you're voting 'Not Guilty'?" he just replied "oh no he definitely did it, I just wanted to exercise everybody's minds :downs:" We ended up not convicting him on "intent to kill" because two old white ladies swore up and down that if he had meant to kill the victim he would have aimed for the head instead of the body. This shooting took place as the victim charged the shooter from across a hotel room about 14 feet wide, mind you, just enough room to assume proper firing stance and aim if you have old lady reflexes, I guess.

PetraCore
Jul 20, 2017

👁️🔥👁️👁️👁️BE NOT👄AFRAID👁️👁️👁️🔥👁️

Rev. Bleech_ posted:

You can always tell when talking about criminal trials people who have never actually done jury duty for one because they never seem to fully appreciate the fact that juries are largely made up of people who are dumb as poo poo. Once was enough to assure me that, guilty or innocent, I never want a jury to decide anything for me.

During deliberation we had a dude go on an hourlong tangent about "what if he DIDN'T do it and <insert fantasy scenario>"; when the foreman got tired of it and said "look, is this something you believe? are you telling me you're voting 'Not Guilty'?" he just replied "oh no he definitely did it, I just wanted to exercise everybody's minds :downs:" We ended up not convicting him on "intent to kill" because two old white ladies swore up and down that if he had meant to kill the victim he would have aimed for the head instead of the body. This shooting took place as the victim charged the shooter from across a hotel room about 14 feet wide, mind you, just enough room to assume proper firing stance and aim if you have old lady reflexes, I guess.
Yeah this is all true.

Solice Kirsk
Jun 1, 2004

.
I've never in my life been summoned to jury duty. How does the choosing process even work?

Solice Kirsk has a new favorite as of 02:39 on Mar 2, 2018

Phanatic
Mar 13, 2007

Please don't forget that I am an extremely racist idiot who also has terrible opinions about the Culture series.

Basebf555 posted:

Proving someone guilty of a crime has always been about putting together a puzzle for the jury and showing them all of these pieces of evidence, allowing them to look at it all together within the full context of the known circumstances.

This is absolutely not how juries work. There are all kinds of ways the "full context of the known circumstances" is denied to the jury. Plenty of juries have convicted people, and then said later "Wait, if we knew that other thing that the court denied us the knowledge of, we'd have voted differently." For example, a number of juries have convicted someone for some trivial incident, and then find out during sentencing that it's a three-strikes violation and some enormous mandatory minimum kicks in and they've effectively sentenced someone to decades in prison for stealing a slice of pizza. Or in a specific case I'm thinking of in New Jersey, the written law allowed a specific defense claim, the defendant actually made that specific defense claim, and then the judge just plain decided not to inform the jury that the law allowed for that exception. Lots of juries (and defense attorneys) never find out that the cop who's the chief witness for the prosecution is on a secret list of cops who've lied either in written reports, sworn statements, or on the witness stand in the past. Or alternately that the charges filed against the defendant have been deliberately watered down.

Juries are in many ways like mushrooms. They are hardly ever provided with the full context of the known circumstances. They are required to reach decisions based on the information they are given in the trial at hand, that is it.

PetraCore
Jul 20, 2017

👁️🔥👁️👁️👁️BE NOT👄AFRAID👁️👁️👁️🔥👁️

Solice Kirsk posted:

I've never in my life been summoned to jury duty. How does the choosing process even work?
I believe they summon a big ol' pool of people, both the prosecution and the defense have a set number of people they can dismiss for any reason (as long as they're not dumb enough to actually SAY 'oh we're dismissing him because he's black'), and then they comb through more finely to try to make sure the jury is ideally as little biased as possible but in reality both the prosecution and the defense want the jury to be as biased as possible towards THEIR side.

When Martin Shkreli went on trial they actually had a hell of a time finding any jurists because people kept admitting upfront they thought he was a rat bastard who should burn in hell.

Pigsfeet on Rye
Oct 22, 2008

I'm meat on the hoof

Solice Kirsk posted:

I've never in my life been summoned to jury duty. How does the choosing process even work?

Seriously? Lucky you somehow. Anyway:
http://www.uscourts.gov/services-forms/jury-service/learn-about-jury-service

uranium grass
Jan 15, 2005

PetraCore posted:

I believe they summon a big ol' pool of people, both the prosecution and the defense have a set number of people they can dismiss for any reason (as long as they're not dumb enough to actually SAY 'oh we're dismissing him because he's black'), and then they comb through more finely to try to make sure the jury is ideally as little biased as possible but in reality both the prosecution and the defense want the jury to be as biased as possible towards THEIR side.

When Martin Shkreli went on trial they actually had a hell of a time finding any jurists because people kept admitting upfront they thought he was a rat bastard who should burn in hell.

He disrespected the Wu-Tang Clan!

Abugadu
Jul 12, 2004

1st Sgt. Matthews and the men have Procured for me a cummerbund from a traveling gypsy, who screeched Victory shall come at a Terrible price. i am Honored.

Rev. Bleech_ posted:

You can always tell when talking about criminal trials people who have never actually done jury duty for one because they never seem to fully appreciate the fact that juries are largely made up of people who are dumb as poo poo. Once was enough to assure me that, guilty or innocent, I never want a jury to decide anything for me.

During deliberation we had a dude go on an hourlong tangent about "what if he DIDN'T do it and <insert fantasy scenario>"; when the foreman got tired of it and said "look, is this something you believe? are you telling me you're voting 'Not Guilty'?" he just replied "oh no he definitely did it, I just wanted to exercise everybody's minds :downs:" We ended up not convicting him on "intent to kill" because two old white ladies swore up and down that if he had meant to kill the victim he would have aimed for the head instead of the body. This shooting took place as the victim charged the shooter from across a hotel room about 14 feet wide, mind you, just enough room to assume proper firing stance and aim if you have old lady reflexes, I guess.

Worst one I've seen was a jury that got convinced that a 250 lb fat guy couldn't have possibly run 1/2 mile in 15 minutes.

Phanatic
Mar 13, 2007

Please don't forget that I am an extremely racist idiot who also has terrible opinions about the Culture series.
I saw this one where the jury was initially leaning heavily towards a guilty verdict of a man accused of murdering a family member, mainly because they just wanted to get done and go home, but also because a number of them were blatant racists. But this one busybody who looked a lot like Henry Fonda engaged in his own personal investigation around the crime scene, made unsworn testimony about the location, and *introduced his own physical evidence into deliberations*, and eventually even persuaded the other jurors to basically just make up a bunch of evidence which was never introduced at trial and was based on literal guesswork and managed to argue them around to a not guilty verdict! It was basically non-stop juror misconduct from start to finish.

Phanatic has a new favorite as of 03:14 on Mar 2, 2018

funmanguy
Apr 20, 2006

What time is it?
Juror nullification is good

Shady Amish Terror
Oct 11, 2007
I'm not Amish by choice. 8(
Jury trials are an obvious shitshow, but they have several advantages over other common criminal justice systems which are also tragic shitshows.

Having been called on for jury duty not too long ago, it was...amusingly ridiculous in some ways. Some jurors basically admitted on day one that they had all but made up their minds because if the person was innocent, why would they be on trial? The judge's instructions included the amusing back-to-back statements of 'you are called upon as a cross-section of the population so that you can each apply your own perspective, reasoning, and expertise in judging the case' and 'you are to disregard all of your own perspectives, reasoning, and expertise and judge the case solely on what you are told by the witnesses and lawyers regardless of whether you think or know it to be false or misleading'. It's like a really stupid zen koan.

E: It should be noted that the trial evidence included a video of the defendant selling drugs. Given the defense made no effort to deny that the depicted was their client, or that they were in fact selling drugs in the video, the rest of the procedural weirdness was probably a moot point.

Also, jury nullification is an important thing to know about and an important concept to have, but that will not stop a judge from holding you in contempt of court for so much as farting with the cadence of 'jury nullification', because it tends to lead to juries making incredibly unpredictable decisions based on God knows what instead of at least sometimes carefully considering the arguments, such as deciding a bunch of ranchers taking over a federal building and bulldozing an archaeological site broke no laws because (???). Conversely, sometimes the law just really is bullshit and it's right and just to say someone is innocent of racial miscegenation or buggery or wearing white after labor day or whatever else. The takeaway is that we're kind of a dumb species sometimes most of the time.

Shady Amish Terror has a new favorite as of 03:37 on Mar 2, 2018

HisMajestyBOB
Oct 21, 2010


College Slice

Phanatic posted:

I saw this one where the jury was initially leaning heavily towards a guilty verdict of a man accused of murdering a family member, mainly because they just wanted to get done and go home, but also because a number of them were blatant racists. But this one busybody who looked a lot like Henry Fonda engaged in his own personal investigation around the crime scene, made unsworn testimony about the location, and *introduced his own physical evidence into deliberations*, and eventually even persuaded the other jurors to basically just make up a bunch of evidence which was never introduced at trial and was based on literal guesswork and managed to argue them around to a not guilty verdict! It was basically non-stop juror misconduct from start to finish.

Yeah, but the prosecution's evidence was all bullshit. Two wrongs made a right.

Caganer
Feb 15, 2018

Solice Kirsk posted:

I've never in my life been summoned to jury duty. How does the choosing process even work?

they ask you questions, then either challenge you for cause or use one of their "strikes" (can strike for any reason as long as it's not like, because you're black or something)

i had a good one where the guy doing the questions was a dick, he'd poorly phrase questions and get mad when people got confused or his answer didn't match the mental bubble sheet he'd made

for example he starts threatening to request contempt charges with the guy before me because he asked where he's employed and he's like "I'm a student" and he was like BEING A STUDENT IS NOT A JOB. IF I WANT TO KNOW YOUR EDUCATION STATUS I WILL ASK. IF YOU ARE UNEMPLOYED SAY UNEMPLOYED OR I WILL HAVE YOU HELP IN CONTEMPT"

so they get to me and one question they were asking everyone is are you a democrat or republican and i don't want to be held in contempt for going full zizek in a court so i just go "no". he repeats it a few times getting madder and madder then asks me if I'm refusing to answer, I say no, he asks again D or R and I'm like "NO!"

and then the judge is like "maybe ask what party he is. does he have a party" and I'm like "i'm registered no affiliation" and the guy is like "I HAVEN'T ASKED YOU A QUESTION. YOU TALK WHEN I ASK YOU A QUESTION... what is your political affiliation?"

"No affiliation"

"You are free to go"

It was loving surreal. The judge was LOLing though

Caganer has a new favorite as of 04:18 on Mar 2, 2018

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The Lone Badger
Sep 24, 2007

Attorneys can't have people held in contempt.

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