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Kaal posted:For what it’s worth, juries are also expected to make an effort to comply with the judge’s orders and to be as objective as possible. If you were asked to intentionally set aside something you were shown in court and make a decision based solely on the evidence put before you, I have confidence that you would be capable of doing that. In some circumstances, probably, but if I saw something just completely damning like a video of the crime itself happening, no I really don't think I could. I saw it happen. There's no doubt he/she is guilty. I guess it also depends on the crime. Shoplifting? Yeah, I can probably ignore it. Brutal murder? Probably not. The Bible fucked around with this message at 03:28 on Sep 22, 2023 |
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Sep 22, 2023 03:26
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The Bible posted:In some circumstances, probably, but if I saw something just completely damning like a video of the crime itself happening, no I really don't think I could. I saw it happen. There's no doubt he/she is guilty. I think it’s helpful to not think of it like your job is to decide if someone is guilty, but rather it’s your job to decide if the prosecution proved that the person is guilty.
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Sep 22, 2023 03:30
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Subjunctive posted:I think it’s helpful to not think of it like your job is to decide if someone is guilty, but rather it’s your job to decide if the prosecution proved that the person is guilty. I know that's how I should look at it, but in more extreme cases, I'd feel personally responsible if the person was released and harmed someone else when I knew for a fact they were guilty and a danger to society. This is an unlikely scenario, of course, and in a case where something like that occurred, the case would probably result in a mistrial and I wouldn't be involved anymore anyway. This is probably why the few times I've been called for jury duty, I was released.
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Sep 22, 2023 04:04
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The Bible posted:In some circumstances, probably, but if I saw something just completely damning like a video of the crime itself happening, no I really don't think I could. I saw it happen. There's no doubt he/she is guilty. If someone is on trial for murder and there's a video of them committing the act, then that video's going to get shown to the jury in court. The judge isn't going to prevent the prosecutor from showing that video unless there's a very good reason for the video to be suppressed.
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Sep 22, 2023 04:56
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Main Paineframe posted:If someone is on trial for murder and there's a video of them committing the act, then that video's going to get shown to the jury in court. The judge isn't going to prevent the prosecutor from showing that video unless there's a very good reason for the video to be suppressed. it's extremely prejudicial to the defense! Extremely! The Bible posted:I've always wondered about something related to this. In theory, either you wouldn't be a juror, or if you are a juror, you wouldn't see the video if it was truly inadmissible (e.g., for example, if the video was obtained unconstitutionally). More likely though such video would be somehow admissible and you'd see it and you'd convict. That said, yes, the judicial instruction to "disregard what you just saw" in the cases where the jury accidentally sees something they shouldn't, is a common source of mistrials. There's a whole kabuki theater dance the defense attorney is supposed to go through in such circumstances, making a motion for mistrial, allowing the judge to give a curative instruction, making a motion for another new trial anyway, etc., all which is designed to address the fundamental tension between "we have to be pretending to give this guy a minimally fair trial" and "can't we just convict this guy already? It's past lunchtime." Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 05:37 on Sep 22, 2023 |
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Sep 22, 2023 05:30
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Main Paineframe posted:If someone is on trial for murder and there's a video of them committing the act, then that video's going to get shown to the jury in court. The judge isn't going to prevent the prosecutor from showing that video unless there's a very good reason for the video to be suppressed. I guess I'm imagining a scenario where the police obtained the evidence through grossly unconstitutional means, as far-fetched as that might seem.
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Sep 22, 2023 06:28
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The Bible posted:I guess I'm imagining a scenario where the police obtained the evidence through grossly unconstitutional means, as far-fetched as that might seem. That isn't farfetched at all, unless 
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Sep 22, 2023 06:35
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The most likely way that you, as a juror, are going to be exposed to inadmissible evidence is a cop or some other prosecution witness mentioning it's existence while on the stand. Next most likely is that it's a high profile case and you decide to ignore the judges instructions about following the news of the trial.
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Sep 22, 2023 07:12
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Kaal posted:For what it’s worth, juries are also expected to make an effort to comply with the judge’s orders and to be as objective as possible. If you were asked to intentionally set aside something you were shown in court and make a decision based solely on the evidence put before you, I have confidence that you would be capable of doing that. Sure, if there's tons of other evidence against the defendant you would still feel confident pointing your fingers at him, but if the admissable evidence has room for other interpretations it gets hairy.
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Sep 22, 2023 09:57
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cant cook creole bream posted:This seems weirdly confident. If at the start of the trail I would see a clearcut video of the defandant shooting the victim and a few hours later it turns that this video was inadmissable, I would be biased and focused on the defendand and would surely disregard the idea that somethung conpletely different happened. Given the choice between letting one murderer avoid massive jail time and get stuck with lesser charges, and setting precedent for police to grossly trample on constitutional rights to get the job done, I can't say I'd side with the cops every time. Or even most of the time.
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Sep 22, 2023 10:23
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The determination of admissibility is made by the judge. The jury is sent out of the room until afterwards. The jury would not see such a video at all, except by mistake, until after the judge had determined that said video was admissible. If the jury did see video that was inadmissible, the defense would ask for a mistrial.
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Sep 22, 2023 10:36
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Just on this point (and I'm saying this because you know that this is something that Trump will try and argue in court if they do have video footage of Trump personally overseeing classified documents on how to best tamper with elections, avoid paying Porn stars and doing RICK'S in Georgia) say a situation arrives where there is a video showing defendent killing someone. Footage is pretty clear. It gets shown to the jury. Then the next day, a defence expert examines the video and then says "this video was Deepfaked." There is legal argument about how sure this expert is, and is that worth throwing out the whole case. Judge decides not to restart the case but says that the video shouldn't have gone to the jury. In that situation, the jury would be left with "they said that video is bad because they can't 100% say it is real. But it looked real convincing." And this type of scenario, I think, is one we might start seeing pretty soon.
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Sep 22, 2023 10:36
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In theory, weighting the percieved validity of different kinds of testimony and evidence is actually supposed to be the jury's job. "One dude says this video is real, another says it's fake" is theoretically a fact question and thus a jury one. Examples of inadmissible evidence would be a video of the defendant committing an entirely different crime on a differentdate and time, or video the cops seized without probable cause or a warrant, or video which had no witness who could authenticate it (that is, state from their own knowledge when the video was taken and how and why it was accurate - "i took this video and it is real").
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Sep 22, 2023 10:45
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The Question IRL posted:Just on this point (and I'm saying this because you know that this is something that Trump will try and argue in court if they do have video footage of Trump personally overseeing classified documents on how to best tamper with elections, avoid paying Porn stars and doing RICK'S in Georgia) say a situation arrives where there is a video showing defendent killing someone. Footage is pretty clear. Shouldn't this have all been entered into evidence before the jury was seated? Both the video, giving the defence access to it to they can get an expert witness, and the defence's objection.
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Sep 22, 2023 10:53
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While I'm going into this more as a thought experiment kind of thing, I am also trying to weight the situation so that it can be applied to an earlier posters question about instructions to juries about disregarding evidence. Like realistically, any video of the crime would have had to have been provided to the defence months in advance of trial and they would have been afforded a chance to have a witness vallidate it long in advance. Then, if there was still a disagreement, it would have been put to a voire dire and decided on admissibility in the absence of the jury. That being said, I could possibly imagine a scenario where evidence is shown, and very late in the day something comes to light that the parties didn't know about before hand and the judge is then left with the question "well now that the jury has seen this, what do I do."
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Sep 22, 2023 11:01
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Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:You have to submit evidence beforehand and there are evidentiary hearings (where the jury is not present) where material is ruled admissible or not. You can't sneak in a surprise video as evidence in a trial. Isn't that kind of what happened during one of the Alex Jones trials, or was that different because the surprise evidence were documents that legally should have been turned over during discovery, but were not (because they were the text equivilant of having a 4k video clearly showing the defendant shooting a man on 5th Avenue, that was found on the defendants phone, which was labeled "That time I shot a guy on 5th Avenue")?
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Sep 22, 2023 11:26
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Judge Schnoopy posted:Given the choice between letting one murderer avoid massive jail time and get stuck with lesser charges, and setting precedent for police to grossly trample on constitutional rights to get the job done, I can't say I'd side with the cops every time. Or even most of the time. I say lambast the loving cops as well in this case, but realistically, I know that's never going to happen.
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Sep 22, 2023 12:50
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You're not really likely to encounter inadmissible physical evidence that suddenly appears at the trial. Both sides will have already run their motions about excluding evidence well before you're sitting down and presenting to a jury. The most likely type of evidence that would come up as an inadmissible during the trial would be statements from a witness on the stand. For instance if they are referencing hearsay which isn't covered by an exception or if a witness references evidence that was excluded.
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Sep 22, 2023 13:11
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Nitrousoxide posted:You're not really likely to encounter inadmissible physical evidence that suddenly appears at the trial. Both sides will have already run their motions about excluding evidence well before you're sitting down and presenting to a jury. The most likely type of evidence that would come up as an inadmissible during the trial would be statements from a witness on the stand. For instance if they are referencing hearsay which isn't covered by an exception or if a witness references evidence that was excluded. Right, and if such a situation does occur, one of two results ensue -- either a mistrial, which is functionally a do over of the whole trial with new jurors, or the judge tells the jurors to ignore it, which does not work but there's a systemic interest in pretending it does (so that there aren't as many mistrial do overs).
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Sep 22, 2023 13:26
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Randalor posted:Isn't that kind of what happened during one of the Alex Jones trials, or was that different because the surprise evidence were documents that legally should have been turned over during discovery, but were not (because they were the text equivilant of having a 4k video clearly showing the defendant shooting a man on 5th Avenue, that was found on the defendants phone, which was labeled "That time I shot a guy on 5th Avenue")? Having your bad attorney send over evidence that you lied (and isn't marked privileged) isn't enough to make it inadmissible. In Jones's case, he was lying about whether the text messages existed and showing the text messages that were sent from his phone by his attorney is a very definitive way of proving you were lying. You also have much different standards for civil trials than criminal trials.
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Sep 22, 2023 13:39
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Randalor posted:Isn't that kind of what happened during one of the Alex Jones trials, or was that different because the surprise evidence were documents that legally should have been turned over during discovery, but were not (because they were the text equivilant of having a 4k video clearly showing the defendant shooting a man on 5th Avenue, that was found on the defendants phone, which was labeled "That time I shot a guy on 5th Avenue")? The Alex Jones case is a wild issue that is its own kettle of fish. It involved his attorney accidentally sending a digital copy of Alex Jones' entire phone contents, shortly before the trial started, without marking it as privileged or protected material in any way. This included evidence that directly contradicted his testimony in both his deposition and during that "Perry Mason Moment" day when he took the stand. Opposing council made a number of attempts to correct this mistake, on Jones' behalf, during which Jones' attorneys had ample time to declaim the data on his phone. It was only because Jones' attorney, Andino Reynal, utterly failed to respond in any coherent manner during his ten-day grace period that said opposing counsel was even allowed to open that phone's data (let alone use its contents as evidence). In this case, the "surprise evidence" here isn't something that the plaintiffs brought to the court on the day of testimony. In fact, in a sense, it was the defendant's counsel that entered it into evidence when the trial began.
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Sep 22, 2023 14:31
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in the 80's and 90's the streets were FULL of career criminals that the police KNEW were guilty but some yuppie lawyer scum got him off because the hero cop was "too rough" or "didn't file the paperwork correctly"!
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Sep 22, 2023 15:58
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Someone related, there's a case where a prosectutor misrepresents the law to jury instructions, and the defense attorney corrects him and gets the judge to agree that it contaminated the jury and it goes straight to mistrial. I clicked on the wrong link somehow. Stil a good Tom cardy, but nothing to do with the thread.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZjlYFWLUDBQ Edit: Now with correct video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZjJl-IXbCEo Shogeton fucked around with this message at 20:57 on Sep 22, 2023 |
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Sep 22, 2023 19:40
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Shogeton posted:Someone related, there's a case where a prosectutor misrepresents the law to jury instructions, and the defense attorney corrects him and gets the judge to agree that it contaminated the jury and it goes straight to mistrial. Which case is this?
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Sep 22, 2023 20:13
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A bit of a tangent, but reading the Wikipedia article for Perry Mason moment has me a little excited for the televised Georgia trial.
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Sep 23, 2023 02:18
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Ulf posted:A bit of a tangent, but reading the Wikipedia article for Perry Mason moment has me a little excited for the televised Georgia trial. If Big Orange actually takes the stand we may see the concurrence of Perry Mason Moment and 3 Stooges Syndrome.
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Sep 23, 2023 02:55
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Gyges posted:If Big Orange actually takes the stand we may see the concurrence of Perry Mason Moment and 3 Stooges Syndrome. I’m hoping for some wild word salad episodes that don’t even come close to answering the question he’s been repeatedly asked that eventually causes him to crumble into little whiny beep boop noises as the only thing his mush brain understands is that it must not answer the question truthfully.
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Sep 23, 2023 04:51
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Judging by the general contempt for anything approaching competence from the Trump camp, I’m gonna suggest that Trump and his lawyers will interact somewhat close to how John Cleese defends Peter Cook here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPDBeoUGnYE
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Sep 23, 2023 12:20
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Ulf posted:A bit of a tangent, but reading the Wikipedia article for Perry Mason moment has me a little excited for the televised Georgia trial.  ??i doubt jones has the ability to congratulate someone else
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Sep 23, 2023 13:54
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InsertPotPun posted:i maintain that alex jones meant that the perry mason moment was for him. jones thought he really had something in the idea that he was accused of withholding evidence yet the plaintiffs were handed the evidence so how could he have been withholding it No, he was clearly thinking he was mocking Bankston when he said that.
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Sep 23, 2023 15:08
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I was listening to lawfare pod today and they were discussing Clark’s motion to remove and they pointed out that Clark’s reasoning for removal is that he was a federal employee and what he did was what he had been directly charged to do by the president. Which is kind of compelling even with the fact that it wasn’t his job. However, the really funny bit is that he has no evidence at all that Trump asked him to write that memo. None. Not even a statement from Trump. It just so classically Trump that he won’t go out of his way one iota to help anyone else. You exist to serve him and that’s it. Never mind that Trump best chance to get the case removed is to piggy back on clark being removed, he just can’t do it. Can’t make a direct statement, can’t say anything that’s unequivocal, can’t take a position and hold it.
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Sep 24, 2023 00:45
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yeah it feels like there's a reasonable case to be made that being a federal employee means that your job includes "other duties as assigned by the president". I could buy that
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Sep 24, 2023 03:04
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Subjunctive posted:yeah it feels like there's a reasonable case to be made that being a federal employee means that your job includes "other duties as assigned by the president". I could buy that
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Sep 24, 2023 04:03
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cant cook creole bream posted:This seems weirdly confident. If at the start of the trail I would see a clearcut video of the defandant shooting the victim and a few hours later it turns that this video was inadmissable, I would be biased and focused on the defendand and would surely disregard the idea that somethung conpletely different happened. Blam, immediate mistrial
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Sep 24, 2023 16:34
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StumblyWumbly posted:I think that in the DoJ in particular, the job is not whatever the President tells you Not knowing what the evidence it would be a fine line about wording an action. If the President asked you to write a memo giving supporting a legal theory on election fraud and electors that supports me canceling the election. That might be legal because you are doing research. If the President says, do this illegal thing and follow my orders, you can't claim that's in your purview.
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Sep 24, 2023 17:10
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Mooseontheloose posted:Not knowing what the evidence it would be a fine line about wording an action. Agreed but right now the question isn’t, “was the president’s order illegal?” It’s, “is this arguably part of your job?” I think that to show some color there would need to be some sort of record that process was being followed which it’s pretty clear there isn’t. That’s not quite true. It was reported that Clark requested a brief from the NSC on voting irregularities which, if there had been would have justified his memo. Except there wasn’t any such evidence and so what Clark did is arguably against the minimal process he himself engaged in.
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Sep 24, 2023 17:23
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InsertPotPun posted:in the 80's and 90's the streets were FULL of career criminals that the police KNEW were guilty but some yuppie lawyer scum got him off because the hero cop was "too rough" or "didn't file the paperwork correctly"! This is a particular peeve of mine (lawyer, although not remotely involved in criminal law in any way) - you'll very often see people saying, or even reporting, that someone "got off on a technicality". If it's being used in regard to a court proceeding, "technicality" means "the law." It's annoying because it's intended to make it sound like procedure isn't important.
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Sep 24, 2023 21:27
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Sarcastro posted:This is a particular peeve of mine (lawyer, although not remotely involved in criminal law in any way) - you'll very often see people saying, or even reporting, that someone "got off on a technicality". If it's being used in regard to a court proceeding, "technicality" means "the law." It's annoying because it's intended to make it sound like procedure isn't important. The problem is that procedure is more often used against marginalized people and more often used for rich people. "The law" is not applied fairly.
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Sep 24, 2023 21:42
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Subjunctive posted:yeah it feels like there's a reasonable case to be made that being a federal employee means that your job includes "other duties as assigned by the president". I could buy that It's never within your job description to commit a crime because the President (or anyone else above you in the executive branch) told you to.
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Sep 24, 2023 22:54
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saintonan posted:It's never within your job description to commit a crime because the President (or anyone else above you in the executive branch) told you to. You can't assume a crime was committed before it's proven
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Sep 24, 2023 23:04
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