How are we supposed to convene an impartial jury for a trial involving high profile political people? [USA]

Submitted ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨WtfEvenIsExistence@reddthat.com⁩ to ⁨[deleted]⁩

Supporters of the person would just vote non-guilty and opponents would just vote guilty. It would just result in hung juries over and over.

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fubo@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
An “impartial” jury doesn’t mean one where every member is ignorant or has no prior opinion.

It’s one where the members are willing to set aside their previous knowledge and opinions and evaluate the evidence that’s presented to them.

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- mySFWaccount@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  How does the court system evaluate that? That seems like a super hard thing to check.
  
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  - fubo@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    Jury selection usually involves asking the prospective jurors various questions, with the lawyers on each side being allowed to dismiss jurors they think will be biased.
    
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  - FuglyDuck@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    jury selection is a very tedious process where every juror is interviewed by the judge and possibly both sides. They get whittled down by the court before being fully assigned, and then the prosecution and defense get to boot a certain number of jurors.
    
    advising on jury selection is actually very lucrative business with both sides dishing out massive amounts of cash to make those checks.
    
    in any case, in this situation, it’s not that they’re looking for unbiased jurors, it’s that they’re looking to balance out the biases of the individual jurors with jurors of apposing bias. I mean, you’d have to be living under a rock at this point to not have a bias as far as trump is concerned.
    
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  - twistypencil@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    Voir dire is the process, if you lie you go to jail
    
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- NutWrench@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  The problem with Trump is that he’s a known quantity to anyone who has lived on Earth for the last 50 years. He’s a compulsive liar, literally about everything and a vile, disgusting person, as well.
  
  Knowing that, I would find it impossible to “just consider the facts” and believe that maybe . . . just maybe, this is the one time he’s telling the truth.
  
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  - Tsavo43@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    Just because you don’t agree with him doesn’t make what he says a lie. Biden has been caught lying nonstop about his son’s business and I’ll bet that you’re just fine with it.
    
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  - khepri@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    Thankfully we put career criminals, well-known in their communities, who people have heard of, on trial on the time. Could you imagine if “I’m too famous as a dirtbag to be tried by a jury of my peers” was a defense?
    
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- khepri@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  Absolutely right. “Impartial” doesn’t mean you’ve never heard of the person, or never seen them on the news, or don’t live near them, or have no opinion of them, or haven’t heard or believe things about what they’ve done. It’s a classic shithead defense to try and tell a judge “the paper did a piece on my crimes and everyone read it, so I can’t get a fair trial!!” Well guess what, that never works, for anyone, ever. There is no such thing as “too famous” for justice, there is no such thing as “too infamous” for justice. And there is no such thing as “the vast majority of people in NY and DC and GA hate me so badly because of who I am and what I’ve done that no one in those states can be allowed to judge me for my acts.”
  
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ozzah@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
That’s a bit cynical, isn’t it?

I can still support a party or individual, but admit they have done something wrong. Likewise, I can oppose a party or individual, and find they have done no wrong in a particular instance.

It’s exactly this blind following and absence of critical thinking or pragmatism that is causing the world to become so dangerously polarised.

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- RightHandOfIkaros@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  
  I can still support a party or individual, but admit they have done something wrong. Likewise, I can oppose a party or individual, and find they have done no wrong in a particular instance.
  
  While this is true that people can do this, the likelihood of it happening is very incredibly small. If something involves politics, the large, supermajority of people will reflect their bias regardless of if they agree to be impartial or not.
  
  Its already difficult enough for people to be impartial when talking about various issues. But give them the ability to destroy a life of a person who thinks the way they hate? Not going to find anyone willing to be in that position that will not follow their own bias.
  
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- FuglyDuck@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  
  It’s exactly this blind following and absence of critical thinking or pragmatism that is causing the world to become so dangerously polarised.
  
  it’s also why nobody is likely to change their minds about the out come. It’s also very likely that even if some of the republican jurors are convinced, that there’s at least one that won’t be, without regard to facts or rule of law, or… you know evidence. (They’ll probably scream something like it’s their god-given-duty to stand for trump. Because you know he’s the second coming of christ or something.)
  
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southsamurai@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
I hate the shithead, but I could still sit on the jury and base a verdict opinion on the facts as presented in court.

It wouldn’t be easy for either side to figure that out during jury selection, but that’s something big law firms have specialists for. Folks that do nothing but sift through juries and pick the best options they can get.

Weeding out the assholes that would make their decision on their preconceived alliances is a high dollar, and high stress thing. And then you have to hope that you don’t have anyone faking it so that they can sway the verdict based on that, and deal with people desperate to avoid sitting on the jury at all.

Ngl, my crippled ass would be trying to avoid it despite believing very strongly in the importance of jury duty. Weeks or months of sitting there in pain, applying self discipline to separate my beliefs and emotions from the facts as presented? Fuck no, that’s a fucking nightmare.

I was fucking miserable during my last jury duty, and that was only three days on a very simple attempted murder case. No fucking way am I not trying to get out of something like this trial lol.

But I’m not unique in my willingness and ability to minimize my own bias for specific and limited situations. There’s plenty of people that will at least try.

And, believe it or not, there are people that don’t have strong beliefs about the shitty cheeto.

But, yeah, jury selection is going to be a nightmare on this one

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- wolfpack86@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  I also don’t see how the jury isn’t sequestered either. I’d imagine there are significant safety concerns and thereby additionally concerns about process integrity.
  
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HR_Pufnstuf@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
I say it should be composed of undocumented immigrants. I mean, if they weren’t in the country at the time, they must be impartial, yeah? ;)

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sturmblast@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
Ever done jury duty? doesn’t really work like that

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Reva@startrek.website ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
That’s why most other countries do not have a jury system for those cases.

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khepri@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
Well its a good thing no famous or political person has ever been on trial then because obviously no jury on earth could handle that fairly if it ever were to happen

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ShakeThatYam@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
Given that DC is like 90% democrat… Might be more likely that we’d get a conviction.

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- WtfEvenIsExistence@reddthat.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  It only takes 1 to hang. And the more re-trials it takes, the more the legitimacy of the trial will be questioned. I can already see the headlines in far-right media “DEMOCRAT WITCHHUNT TRIAL RESULT IN MISTRIAL FOR THE THIRD TIME IN A ROW.” Yes they’ll probably spew BS like that regardless, but in this hypothetical scenario, they’ll get to say that shit in multiple waves, further solidifying the false belief that this is an illegitimate trial, whereas if he gets convicted by the first pool of jurors, it’d likely sway trump voters who are on the edge to either vote for a third party or not voting. The results of the trial will affect the 2024 election results.
  
  It’s going to be a battle between the narratives of: “Corrupt Politician Gets Rightfully Convicted” vs “Innocent Public Servant Becomes Victim of Witchhunt” depending on how the trial goes.
  
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