D&D 5E Jury duty still ongoing...

[Sunseeker]

The idea of a six-month trial blows my mind. Poor juror's brain must be long-melted by now.

Probably. What's sad is that this a real problem with long trials, juror burnout. Eventually the jury gets so tired of basically being imprisoned themselves that they stop listening to the actual arguments, stop reviewing the evidence and just vote whichever way gets the trial ended quickest so they can move on with their lives. Which often can lead to a mistrial, an acquittal or simply forcing the court to select a whole new jury, essentially wasting everyones time.

 

[Coredump]

I sat in on a trial once. It dealt with attempted murder, a love triangle of two woman and a man, accusations that one woman attacked the other, that the victim injured herself, the male testimony changed over time...... I mean it was really crazy stuff.... TV show level crazy.

And the trial was BORING! Like pluck your eyes out boring, stupid long drawn out boring.... and it only lasted a couple of weeks.

TV makes trials seem all fun and interesting...... rather watch paint dry.

 

[Mercule]

I sat in on a trial once. It dealt with attempted murder, a love triangle of two woman and a man, accusations that one woman attacked the other, that the victim injured herself, the male testimony changed over time...... I mean it was really crazy stuff.... TV show level crazy..

My understanding is that many (most?) of the people involved in "really bad stuff" aren't great people. Nor do they associate with great people. Nor do they do bad things to great people. Nor do they do it in places great people are likely to witness it. Nor do great people defend them. So, the worse the stuff is, the more likely that everyone, on all sides, will be at least one of the following: a chronic liar, really stupid, generally unlikable, crazy. That all adds up to an ordeal that's roughly equivalent to liar's chicken.

 

[Gilladian]

I recently was on a jury trial that lasted a week. It was nasty, involving a now-23-year-old making an accusation about an assault that happened 10 years earlier. We had to listen to what these people's lives had been like for the entire 7 YEARS between the initial event, and the outcry. It was devastatingly difficult. All of us, men included, were in tears at one point or another. And in the end it boiled down to who believed who. There was no physical evidence after all that time. We ended by convicting the attacker on several lesser charges because of the lack of evidence. I don't wish that on ANYONE. I will, to the end of my days, wonder if we REALLY did the right thing, even though at the time I was utterly convinced it WAS. These were decent people, except for the attacker, who were simply beholden to the wrong person at the wrong time, and who had no clue how to deal with what had happened.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Probably. What's sad is that this a real problem with long trials, juror burnout. Eventually the jury gets so tired of basically being imprisoned themselves that they stop listening to the actual arguments, stop reviewing the evidence and just vote whichever way gets the trial ended quickest so they can move on with their lives. Which often can lead to a mistrial, an acquittal or simply forcing the court to select a whole new jury, essentially wasting everyones time.

If someone were to make the argument that anyone whose guilt cannot be established in a month-long trial is not guilty beyond reasonable doubt and therefore deserves acquittal... I'd find that argument very plausible.

Argh, frustration. I want that conversion guide.

 

[Mercurius]

I heard the trial was an attempted murder case, the accused being Ed Ishenfor, the victims being Dan Junz and Dre Gunz.

 

[Sunseeker]

If someone were to make the argument that anyone whose guilt cannot be established in a month-long trial is not guilty beyond reasonable doubt and therefore deserves acquittal... I'd find that argument very plausible.

Reasonably speaking I agree. There are always exceptions, but generally speaking all the reasons the person is guilty/innocent and all the evidence supporting those assertions should be ready in advance, they then only need to be presented. If something comes up later it can be addressed in a supplementary fashion or a new trial with new jurors if so needed.

 

[Chocolategravy]

The idea of a six-month trial blows my mind. Poor juror's brain must be long-melted by now.

Yeah, if it's a 12 person jury that is 6 person years effectively being locked away. Crazy. At some point the punishment being dealt to the jury is greater than the punishment that could possibly be done to the defendant if found guilty.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Yeah, if it's a 12 person jury that is 6 person years effectively being locked away. Crazy. At some point the punishment being dealt to the jury is greater than the punishment that could possibly be done to the defendant if found guilty.

My aunt sat on a sequasterd jury back when I was young (young enough I don't remember it) she told me years later it was the worst 76 days of her life and she would have aquited Hitler or put mother Teresa to the electric chair if it ment getting home 1 day sooner...

 

[pemerton]

If someone were to make the argument that anyone whose guilt cannot be established in a month-long trial is not guilty beyond reasonable doubt and therefore deserves acquittal... I'd find that argument very plausible.

Reasonably speaking I agree. There are always exceptions, but generally speaking all the reasons the person is guilty/innocent and all the evidence supporting those assertions should be ready in advance, they then only need to be presented.

That presentation can sometimes take a long time, though.

In general, the length of a trial reflects the prosecution's evidence rather than the defendant's.

From the point of view of a prosecutor, there is a trade-off: reduce the amount of material presented, in which case the jury get less frustrated but there is the possibility of gaps in the material presented; or present it all, to tne Nth degree of completion, but risk boring/frustrating the jurors.

My impression is that a skilled advocate will recognise the risk of boring the jurors and therefore cut the material so as to make the duration of the trial manageable; but when a prosecutor is working in a bureaucratised environment, the pressures go the other way. In particular, no one wants to be the person who chooses not to lead some particular bit of evidence, then have the jury acquit the defendant, and then be blamed, because if only that extra bit of evidence had been led then the jury might have convicted. So the safe path is to lead everything. Hence long trials.