r/nottheonion • u/ArgentineBeauty • 19h ago

Reese Witherspoon Chosen as Jury Foreman After Jurors Thought She Went to Law School Because of Legally Blonde

https://www.fashiontimes.co.uk/reese-witherspoon-jury-duty-mix-1763528
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u/ArgentineBeauty 19h ago

"The strangest moment came during the jury's deliberations, when the group needed to choose a foreperson. According to Witherspoon, the other jurors quickly decided that she should take the role. The actress found it odd why her fellow jurors would choose her among the rest.

When she asked why they had singled her out, their explanation left her stunned: they believed she had been to law school."

Worrying that a jury looked at Reese Witherspoon and thought “Legally Blonde” was a documentary.

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u/die5el23 19h ago

& those people are in charge of another persons life

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u/ldg25 19h ago

"Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that"

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u/Zxvasdfthrowaway 18h ago

Reese went on to say that her fellow jurors were making decisions based on vibes, not the evidence presented. Yikes.

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u/wayoverpaid 18h ago edited 18h ago

That was 100% my jury experience.

Me: Look the instructions we got from the judge says that we assess damages based on how much unjust enrichment actually happen when this fucker stole the other guy's business.

Them: Yeah but the business wasn't actually worth that much, and he should have known not to trust a handshake deal.

Me: But we're here to assess damages. That they stole the business was decided already.

Them: I still don't think we should award that much.

And like, cool, I guess the jury does get to toss out the law if they think the law is dumb, but I never heard anyone taking that explicit stance. Just gut feeling, and a few "whatever it takes to get this done."

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u/ty_fighter84 18h ago

This is why I never instantly fault people for taking a deal.

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u/Sawses 18h ago

It's also why we have 12 jurors and for criminal cases they all have to agree. Even if 90% of people are completely incapable of making a reasonable decision, statistically you're still very likely to have at least one person who would rather hang the jury than convict somebody wrongfully.

Fun fact: Attorneys don't like scientists and engineers on the jury because their bar for "beyond reasonable doubt" is usually very high compared to the average person.

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u/RandomMandarin 18h ago

Until 2019, a criminal trial in Louisiana only needed 10 jurors out of 12 to obtain a conviction. Needless to say, the results were consistently unfair and racist.

https://www.vera.org/news/unanimous-juries-bring-21st-century-justice-to-louisiana

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u/FUPAMagneto 15h ago

Careful, or you’ll have a bunch of Brits insisting that 10/12 jurors is completely fine to send somebody to prison for life

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u/Loggerdon 14h ago edited 6h ago

The off-topic but I was on a jury last year. A young policeman was accused of domestic violence and also of “Child Endangerment” (leaving his loaded service weapon on the playground in the back yard where his and the neighbor kids play daily). At first I thought the jury was going to be a typical cross section of the US, with at least 4 out of 12 people were imbeciles. I was not the jury foreman but I guess I was his right hand man. As it turned out when it came time to debate, EVERY SINGLE PERSON argued their points very vigorously. It was kind of reassuring because it seemed the system worked. Then we all reached a verdict to convict and I walked away feeling very proud of our group of 12 citizens.

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u/gsfgf 5h ago

That's actually the norm in criminal cases. There's a reason we keep using juries of ones peers, after all.

In civil cases, juries are fucking random. But that does provide a good incentive to settle.

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u/CobaltMnM 17h ago edited 16h ago

The number of jurors is location dependent. Florida it’s usually only 6.

Also bs on your fun fact. I was a prosecutor for years. I prayed for scientists and engineers. I prefer my cases being decided based on facts, not vibes. If I “lost”, so be it.

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u/Sawses 17h ago

Fair enough! I stand corrected. In your experience, do you think other attorneys generally shared your scruples?

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u/DustyRacoonDad 16h ago

As a fellow engineer who knows plenty of attorneys, they're going to agree with the prosecutor guy above.

They HATE when they have something legitimate, for or against, that's completely logical, and then the jury is still entirely illogical and dumb, running on vibes. I get to hear that gripe often.

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u/hardolaf 15h ago

Where I lived in Florida for 3 years, the prosecutors didn't want us "liberal" engineers and scientists to get in the way of their bad evidence. Over in Orlando, it was the exact opposite.

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u/CobaltMnM 15h ago

Yikes.

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u/greenzetsa 17h ago

Good for you! I feel like that isn't always the case though.

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u/CobaltMnM 17h ago

Thanks. I tried really hard to be “one of the good ones”.

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u/the_scarlett_ning 16h ago

Idk if that makes it bs though. I’m in Louisiana and I’ve certainly heard lawyers (usually the prosecutors) that don’t want people who are too educated on the jury and they never want people who might know the law.

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u/AlarmingAffect0 16h ago

If I “lost”, so be it.

You mean to tell me you weren't chasing the perfect conviction record and your career didn't depend on it? Or it did and you didn't care? If it's the second, my hat off to you. Sincerely. That is not what the system incentivizes AFAIK.

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u/CobaltMnM 16h ago

I was fortunate enough to have a boss who knew what our job was and had my back.

There is a great quote from a USSC case in 1935, Berger v. US, that I printed in large font and hung over my computer monitor while there to remind me what actually mattered:

"The [prosecutor] is the representative not of an ordinary party to a controversy, but of a sovereignty whose obligation to govern impartially is as compelling as its obligation to govern at all, and whose interest, therefore, in a criminal prosecution is not that it shall win a case, but that justice shall be done. As such, he is in a peculiar and very definite sense the servant of the law, the two-fold aim of which is that guilt shall not escape or innocence suffer. He may prosecute with earnestness and vigor -- indeed, he should do so. But, while he may strike hard blows, he is not at liberty to strike foul ones. It is as much his duty to refrain from improper methods calculated to produce a wrongful conviction as it is to use every legitimate means to bring about a just one."

https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/295/78/

A prosecutor is literally the only type of attorney who's "job" is not solely to "win" their cases.

(And sadly, I know there are plenty of bad apples out there.)

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u/spakatieo 16h ago

The number of jurors who must agree to convict a defendant of a crime is dependent on the crime(s) with which the defendant is charged, in Florida and in most, if not all, other states in the U.S. Florida requires all 12 jurors to agree in order to convict a defendant of first degree murder.

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u/twitch1982 16h ago

LMAO

I prefer my cases being decided based on facts, not vibes.

You allow cops to testify?

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u/CobaltMnM 15h ago

Working that closely with them you’d get a good idea of which ones were good and which ones weren’t. Once they were on my shit list from any case, absolutely not. I’d drop cases if their testimony was required for a conviction.

Made a few enemies that way but such is life.

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u/TheOutsideJoke 17h ago

Some states have changed or removed peremptory strikes, which means that attorneys can’t get rid of people without a reason anymore. I think that it has been good change overall in my state because certain groups of people are not automatically excluded from the process.

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u/Prometheus720 17h ago

They probably still are if your state uses voter rolls to find jury candidates

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u/RegulatoryCapture 17h ago

Fun fact: Attorneys don't like scientists and engineers on the jury because their bar for "beyond reasonable doubt" is usually very high compared to the average person.

Really depends on the case (and which side is challenging the juror).

There are certainly cases where attorneys desperately want someone logical and fact-oriented on the jury.

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u/Rotten-Roses 18h ago

Yeah this kind of thing is why I'll probably never actually end up on a jury for better or worse. My whole job can be described as forensic statistics with "beyond a reasonable doubt" having a numerical threshold for certainty. I have cousins who are prosecutors and defense attorneys and the defense side loves it at least.

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u/legal_stylist 18h ago

So … defense attorneys presumably like them just fine, then?

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u/almoooo 17h ago

That’s funny you say that about the Engineer because when I had jury duty, one of the gentleman in the jury pool was an Engineer. He was really cool and super smart and every time he answered one of their questions, you could tell they felt some type of way about it. Especially when it came to evidence. He’s like “We’ll I can’t make an informed decision without all the data available to me, id have to know this or that or etc. I’d also need to know the EXACT definition of the law” And I’m giggling because I felt like I was watching a conversation with my husband and I as a 3rd person.

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u/Scaevus 13h ago

Fun fact: Attorneys don't like scientists and engineers on the jury because their bar for "beyond reasonable doubt" is usually very high compared to the average person.

Correct, this is how we were trained as prosecutors. The reasoning is also because these are professions where people look for problems and are inclined to be more skeptical than the public.

Other professions to avoid included attorneys (you don't want people to second guess what you're doing by thinking they could do a better job), and teachers (people whose job it is to grade other people).

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u/Nukemind 15h ago

It's also why we have 12 jurors and for criminal cases they all have to agree. Even if 90% of people are completely incapable of making a reasonable decision, statistically you're still very likely to have at least one person who would rather hang the jury than convict somebody wrongfully.

Ironically when I did criminal defense we didn't like them for the reverse reason: they often did exactly what you said, but were less emotional, and frankly it wasn't uncommon to have cases that relied on emotion more than susbtance (despite only being able to present facts). Sometimes cases were just stinkers.

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u/LordBeric 14h ago

Ha, I served on a jury a couple years ago and was elected the jury foreman. I kept insisting the other jurors that I was pretty certain the guy did it, but there were reasons that left me with a "reasonable doubt" so, as instructed, I thought we should find him not guilty.

I am an engineer.

Other anecdote that relates to dumb jurors: The trial was for if a guy committed 2nd Degree Robbery. We were instructed that this meant he assaulted someone while committing theft. We all agreed that him shoving his girlfriend amounted to assault, and most people agreed that he committed theft. One older lady that agreed with both of these findings insisted that she just couldn't call that a robbery. I repeatedly tried to explain to her that there is a difference between what we would conversationally call robbery and what is legally considered robbery, but she just refused to hear it.

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u/sighthoundman 18h ago

Take a look at r/insurance. "Of course the insurance company settled for $8000. It would cost more than that to defend and they still might lose." But the plaintiffs accepted $8000? Prima facia evidence of a fraudulent claim. (Counting "stretching the truth" as fraud, which is a whole other question.)

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u/brittneyacook 18h ago

My firm is settling a bullshit slip and fall case because it would cost waaaaay more to try it. They’re only asking for like $10k (versus the $50k+ a jury trial will cost, and that’s not including pretrial billing)

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u/bradd_pit 17h ago

Settlement is not an admission of guilt

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u/Skill3rwhale 17h ago

The releases the insurance and attorneys have you sign explicitly state this.

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u/sighthoundman 17h ago

Settling a case for a small payout is an admission that you have a weak case.

As Mark Twain said, "It is incredibly difficult to convince someone of something when their entire salary depends on them not understanding it." It may not be the facts of the case or the law, but all sorts of non-legal things that make a case hard to prosecute.

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u/Rotten-Roses 18h ago

Yeah your alternative is being judged by "12 idiots too dumb to avoid jury duty" which is a terrifying sentiment, especially when a lot of the people you might want get specifically selected /against/ by the other side for obvious reasons.

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u/hairsprayking 18h ago

Where i live, Lawyers can't serve on a jury because they know the law too well lol

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u/20_mile 17h ago

I guess the jury does get to toss out the law if they think the law is dumb

My brother was on a jury for a POC accused of selling drugs. Upon arrest, the cops threw him into the back of the cop car and filled it with pepper spray and let the guy choke for twenty minutes.

My brother and a couple of other jurors were able to convince the rest of the members that, even if he was guilty of the crime, he had already served his sentence, and shouldn't have to be punished a second time.

Not Guilty.

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u/wayoverpaid 17h ago

Legit.

In an ideal world "excessive brutality imposed by police has tainted this entire attempt at justice" would be a thing lawmakers would have to deal with, and confirm or deny if the cruelty is acceptable. We know it's happening, but now we have a clear instance, so sign your fucking name to it! No? Then let it be forever enshrined in case law that anyone who gets pepper sprayed in the back of a vehicle can use that as credit.

This is a half baked idea and I can see potential problems with it... but that guy was basically lucky he had the jury he did, and that should be made consistent.

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u/Shazzbot1 17h ago

I believe this is called jury nullification. They agreed the dude the crime, but they don’t agree that it should be punished.

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u/_thisisvincent 16h ago

Ohhh fuck jury nullification mention on Reddit

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u/Clovis69 14h ago

Shshshssssshhhhh...we can't use the JN words cause that makes the lawyers get all defensive and the judges act like it'll end the world

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u/Justausername1234 11h ago

Well, it's because mentions of Jury Nullification make reasonable people wonder about the opposite... What if the jury finds guilt in a person who they thought was innocent...

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u/LeastCoordinatedJedi 15h ago

Based jury, thanks for the weirdly uplifting-depressing story.

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u/Translycanthrope 18h ago

This is exactly why most legal proceedings are handled behind the scenes. You cannot predict what a jury will do and they are known to make some dumb decisions.

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u/c-9 16h ago

I've been on a few juries. People really don't take things that are their civic responsibility seriously.

And that's how we've gotten into the mess we are in.

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u/Maiyku 17h ago

I was lucky. We only had 1 juror going on “vibes” and another who was just too uncertain to say one way or the other.

The one going on vibes should’ve never been allowed on the jury in the first place. It was a gang related case and her mother had been in a gang involved shooting years prior.

She didn’t care what the laws were, she was actively looking for any little loophole she could to put our defendant away for life. Not because of the presumed crimes he committed (or didn’t) but because of a personal biases she held.

We were 10-2 not guilty and she refused to budge and is the reason the case was declared a mistrial. She refused to let go of her biases to the point that me and another juror actually took a stand and refused to change our votes so she couldn’t corrupt everyone to switching to her side and change the outcome of the case with her bias.

Thankfully, our stand didn’t matter and the other jurors didn’t budge either. Final vote was still 10-2 a full 3 days later.

The other vote wasn’t actually stopping us. She just wanted manslaughter, not murder.

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u/wayoverpaid 17h ago

That's lucky? Sounds awful.

Fortunately for me it was a difference in value and I suggested we all agreed damages were between X and Y, and we could all pick a number and average it.

The guy who was wronged did ok in the end, but I did the math and he got something like an inflation adjusted return on what would have happened if the defendants had just been honest anyway. Shoulda got more for his trouble.

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u/Maiyku 17h ago

Lucky in the sense that it was only one. So it’s not like it was a 50/50 split and we were warring in the jury room.

We were mostly arguing with HER. Trying to understand and see what she did. It was as she explained (by basically admitting her bias) that me and the other jury member locked eyes and just did a silent nod. We could not let her bias influence the outcome of the case.

Not only was she stating factually wrong things and grasping for straws that did not exist, but I also feared the defense could use her somehow. That the jury pool was tainted, etc because of her extreme biases, which would made retrial all that much more fun for them, might cause them to move districts, whatever.

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u/Obi-Tron_Kenobi 14h ago

because of personal biases she held.

This is why it bothers me when people online use their past victimhood to weigh in on what punishment they think an alleged criminal should get.

I see it so often when someone says "I was a victim of [blank] and think everyone who does [blank] should get life in prison/the death penalty/cruel and unusual punishment..." when there's an article on someone who "only" got X years in prison

They use it to act as an authority on the subject, but don't realize their biases are clouding their judgment and are judging the perpetrator more harshly than what might be fair or necessary for rehabilitation

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u/Scaevus 12h ago

The one going on vibes should’ve never been allowed on the jury in the first place.

Many attorneys aren't very good at jury selection. But that's also just an inherent danger of a jury pool. It's actually very difficult for people to let go of their biases, even if they're pointed out to them. If anything, that makes them defensive and hold onto those biases even harder.

I would never pick a jury trial if it were up to me.

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u/ShinyPatina 16h ago

Yup. Sat on a 1 1/2 week long murder trial where the evidence to convict just was not really there and there was SO much reasonable doubt that another person (who right before the trial began had been killed on the streets) could've also done the murder.

We were deadlocked for 3 days, 10-2, because two women jurors just kept saying, "We just FEEL he's guilty." The refused to engage with the rest of us pointing out lack of proof.

On the third day, after we told the judge we were deadlocked, he said, "I'll see you tomorrow and the next day and the day after that until you come to a unanimous decision. No one is going to hang this jury."

The next day we all came in a settled down with our books, and the two women huddled in a corner talking and finally came over to the rest of us and said, "FINE. We'll vote not guilty but we still FEEL he is but want to go home."

So we acquitted the guy and about 8-months later on a whim I looked him up and saw that he too had been gunned down on the streets and I thought, "Well, if we got it wrong that was the universe correcting us on that one."

But yeah, some people should not be jurors because they simply cannot look at the evidence or obey the judges' instructions and just want to go on what they feel or believe when that is not the job of a juror.

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u/Interesting_Tea5715 17h ago

Same. I was part of a jury where there was crazy amounts of evidence against the person, it was an obvious slam dunk case.

People were still saying, we don't know how this will affect the guy we should reconsider.... Bruh, dude was drunk as fuck and broke the law several times (endangering others) he lost his chance at forgiveness.

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u/DustyRacoonDad 16h ago

I mean, yeah, the jury does get to toss out the law if they think the law is dumb. That's jury nullification, and sometimes it's a great thing.

The problem is that the jurors are dumb.

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u/hippydippyshit 18h ago

I dunno, I think it was pretty smart of them to elect her to lead considering the other options

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u/Impressive_Ad_5201 18h ago

She had the practice to project confidence, annunciate, project her voice and keep a straight face in front of the court. She was probably the best choice available.

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u/-Supposably- 16h ago

Plus I heard she went to law school

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u/Wise-Funny5471 18h ago

Stephen Lambert, executive producer for The Traitors, has said that watching how contestants confidently pick the wrong people on little to no evidence has shaken his faith in the real-world jury system.

I haven't had the opportunity to sit one, but I can totally see what you and others in this thread are describing.

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u/MrBossFromTheHitTVSh 16h ago

Eh, on that show they're deliberately given little or confusing evidence, and encouraged to make something out of nothing. And like, no offense to the contestants but the majority of them I wouldn't trust to water a plant, let alone actually participate in a jury.

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u/airinato 14h ago

Congrats, you're just figuring out exactly what a jury does with the average idiots.

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u/Lokarin 18h ago

Which goes to show she was the right choice to be foreperson

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u/MAGAHATESTHEUSA 18h ago

Tbf reese has more experience with legal issues than the average person considering her billion dollar empire she runs and having agents and multiple contracts to deal with per year and soonsorships and whatnot.

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u/20_mile 17h ago

soonsorships

They only ever gave me latersonships : (

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u/MAGAHATESTHEUSA 17h ago

Damn those Soonsors with their odd demands

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u/BabaYadaPoe 18h ago

every now and than r/all has the movie reenactment of Marianne Bachmeier who point blank shoot and killed the person who raped and murdered her 7 yo daughter, and I would dare to say, most people approved of what she did and if it was up to them she wouldn't server a day in prison (she was sentenced to 6 years, released after 3).

now this is an extreme case, but it just show how hard it is to actually judge solely on evidence and not be moved by "vibes", so to speak, aka, life are usually gray, rather than black and white.

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u/dubbleplusgood 17h ago

Wait until you find out how presidents are elected....

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u/Nairb131 16h ago

First jury I was ever on, two ladies were convinced the defendant was guilty, 'because she looked guilty'.

She wasn't.

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u/HappycatAF 18h ago

I’ve been told by lawyers there are two types of jurors, ones who want to be there because being a juror is a better use of their time than their time spent in their usual life, and the second are people who are too dumb to avoid getting picked from the jury pool.

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u/Both_Examination9788 18h ago

They also select against people who are more likely to be wise to the lawyers’ tricks (other lawyers, psychologists, etc.)

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u/Hortos 18h ago

You mean ANY professional of above average intelligence?

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u/Both_Examination9788 18h ago edited 18h ago

I mean generally yeah lol. But particularly those who are more logic-driven. People in STEM are often disqualified.

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u/SunshineCat 17h ago

Seems kind of insane to specifically select for people who think in a reactionary/emotional way instead of at least allowing a group that actually represents the overall population.

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u/HappycatAF 17h ago

There is a saying in law, “If the facts are on your side, pound the facts. If the law is on your side, pound the law. If neither is on your side, pound the table.”

If the two sides are at the jury stage, they are usually at the table pounding side since if the law or facts were on their side it would have long settled.
So if it is that type of case, they want a jury that can be persuaded by emotion. There is also no shortage of them.

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u/c-9 16h ago

I am in STEM and I've been on a few juries. I do it because I take the responsibility seriously. I try to be the person I'd want to be on the jury in case I was on trial. You pretty much have to keep your mouth shut during voir dire.

I was able to convince a jury to acquit a woman. Judging by appearances, she was probably guilty. But our justice system shouldn't operate on prejudice. The burden of proof is on the prosecutor and they didn't make a good case. Innocent until PROVEN guilty, at least beyond a reasonable doubt. Which the prosecution did not meet IMO.

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u/RegulatoryCapture 16h ago

FWIW, I'm a STEMmy person and I've been on a jury where someone from my specific profession actually testified as an expert.

The lawyers hung around to talk to the jury afterwards and I asked about it. The defense wanted me there--to my eye it was a pretty clear emotion vs facts personal injury lawsuit so I can understand why they wanted me. The plaintiffs didn't think I was worth burning a rejection over...figured if their facts were better, I'd side with them--I certainly wasn't some biased juror who would never side with their client and that's who they need to save their challenges for (e.g. someone who doesn't believe in offering pain and suffering damages at all).

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u/Scheissdrauf88 18h ago

I think you can't call yourself a justice system anymore when performance plays a bigger role than facts.

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u/firedmyass 18h ago

I’m semi-retired and would like to do my duty but I have a close relative who is a judge so I’m immediately stricken the second they see my orientation form. I get it though.

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u/magnus150 18h ago

I genuinely want to participate in the civil process at least once in my life and see how it works. Yet despite being called for jury duty 3 times, I was never picked.

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u/TjW0569 18h ago

My attitude is: "I'm willing to do what I can, as best I can, because that's what I'd want other people to do for me."
But I've never been selected. Pretty much as soon as I admit to being an engineer, I'm out the door.

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u/Comic_Book_Reader 18h ago

"People may die but stupidity lives forever."

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u/Caira_Ru 18h ago

I remember senior year of high school, there was a guy who was SO DAMN PROUD of being “on top of the bell curve” for grading. Like, shouting “BOO-YA, I beat you dorky nerds!” to the two kids with the highest scores.

I think of him every time Carlin comes up.

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u/Crippled2 18h ago

Stpud people vote

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u/firedmyass 17h ago

don’t you dare change that typo

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u/TheModWhoShaggedMe 18h ago edited 18h ago

It's not even just low IQs in a lot of cases, there's a general intellectual laziness trend wrought upon society by the device prompts, the filtered bubbles, "smart" phones (w/ dumber people\*) and AI/etcetera replacing thinking, exercising brains.

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u/mcmcc 18h ago

Jokes aside, truthiness is a real phenomenon. Many people live immersed in varying degrees of fantasy.

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u/SussySpecs 18h ago

A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it.

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u/lordnacho666 18h ago

Yeah but there's 12 of them! You can't miss on all 12!

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u/JalapenoPopPoop 17h ago

The funny thing about this quote is no one who invokes it ever considers there's even a chance they're in the bottom half

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u/Orion14159 19h ago

Most of them vote too.

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u/Tooulogyh 18h ago

Oh we know! Trust me we can tell who voted.

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u/foo_fight3r 16h ago

Most of them vote too.

And ALL of them can be jurors. Decide someone's fate.

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u/breakupbydefault 15h ago

And that's how we ended up with Trump

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u/bluris 18h ago

Maybe democracy isn't our best option, shame it beats the others we came up with. 

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u/Orion14159 17h ago

Yeah we really are depending on people making good decisions and having literally any critical thinking skills.

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u/Human_Ad7946 18h ago

I was summoned for jury duty. We were given numbers, 1 through 20, and asked to line up sequentially. You would be shocked (or maybe not) at the number of adults who were unable to do this. Many also couldn't turn their phones off. The bailiff had to confiscate a bunch. One dude just stood in the middle of the court when we all filed in and were told to take a seat. He looked paralyzed by confusion. Luckily I was dismissed.

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u/BackgroundSummer5171 17h ago

Luckily I was dismissed.

You heard these stories.

You seem to have brain cells.

Wouldn't it be better that you are chosen? You know, to decide the fate of people and their lives.

Instead of leaving it up to those less mentally capable.

I know it puts a burden on you for a week or two or whatever. But still, I'd prefer to be chosen.

I was dismissed also last time I was called.

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u/Human_Ad7946 16h ago

Well, I wasn't chosen because of my profession. One, or both, attorneys didn't want a healthcare professional hearing the workmens comp case. I would have gladly served, though painfully I'm sure.

A coworker served on a federal jury for weeks. She said all of her fellow jurors were bright people. I think they are more discriminate in higher stakes cases.

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u/AndChewBubblegum 18h ago

I was also selected for jury duty. I won't pretend like we had a room full of Rhodes scholars. But given the instructions and limitations imposed on us by the court, I was surprised how well a few days off deliberation was able to converge on a conclusion that felt like it was appropriate.

Maybe my experience was unusual. But I also think the other extreme doesn't reflect the average experience.

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u/knotallmen 18h ago

The lawyers pick the juries. I have a coworker who is great in her field and has many interests outside of her job including education like languages and musical instruments that would love to be on a jury and is always excited when she gets a jury notice. I don't think any lawyer would ever want her on a jury, or at least I don't think both sets of lawyers would both want her.

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u/wayoverpaid 18h ago

I was certain I was gonna get removed from a jury. Some aspects of the case hinged on "oops tee hee we lost all the data from our computer it overheated" and "that website was never deployed."

I'm a CTO.

Nope. I Juror #1. During the trial I noticed that the printout of the supposedly never deployed website had, clear as day, the URL it was printed from.

I wanted to scream "Can no one pull up an archive of that site?" as people were testifying, but I was prohibited from researching it per the instructions.

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u/RegulatoryCapture 16h ago edited 15h ago

I think that's the hardest part of being a smart person on a jury, especially on a low-budget trial.

You see things and you are like...how the fuck is that not knowable? I was on a jury for a minor vehicle accident (but involving a city bus so there was potentially lots of money at stake). Nobody could say how fast the bus was moving...despite having multiple angles of camera footage. WTF?

It is trivial to solve that. Speed = Distance/Time. Set a reference point like the edge of the side door window. Go to the site and measure some visible landmarks (there were plenty). Count the number of frames it takes to pass. Do it with several landmarks at various points to get bounds around the true speed at the point of impact. That's an easy task to hire an expert witness to testify to.

But then you get into the trial strategy and evidentiary issues. Maybe they DID do that calculation, but in pre-trial hearings, the judge limited how many experts they could present at trial and neither side thought it was worth putting forward a video analysis expert to determine speed because maybe they determined the vehicle wasn't speeding and the evidence wasn't useful. But since it isn't in the record, nobody can talk about speed.

Then maybe it becomes a useful question for the plaintiff to say "do you know if the bus was speeding?" (even if they've done the analysis to determine it wasn't) to make the defense crash damage expert witness look like he doesn't know what he is talking about (even though the court has ruled he can't talk about the speed since he's not a video analysis expert) and plant the seed of "speeding" in the jury's mind.

Or maybe you just don't have the budget. Video analysis guy is going to charge you a few grand to do the analysis and write a report, and then you'll have to pay his hourly rate for the other side to take his deposition. Then you pay his hourly rate for him to sit in court and eventually testify. Suddenly you've spent $10k+ to establish that the bus was going between 28.3 and 30.5 MPH. Is that fact worth it? Or is it better to just let the jury think people are idiots who can't figure out how fast the bus was moving?

I wanted to scream "Can no one pull up an archive of that site?"

So in your case...maybe someone DID pull up the archive of the site, but it wasn't helpful. Or there was some reason that evidence was excluded like it would have required a separate expert to go to Archive.org, testify that it was a reliable source and get the page admitted.

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u/wayoverpaid 15h ago

Fair, but given the entire printout was in evidence, saying "can you read this text on the bottom saying 'printed from www.somecompany.com/page/thing'" should be allowed?

There may have been a reason they couldn't do it but two of us could read it. It was small text and I would 100% have drawn attention to it given that denying the site went live was not a sudden reveal.

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u/RegulatoryCapture 15h ago

Similarly in my case, you could read between the lines of some of the objections and bench discussions and see that one of the plaintiffs definitely had several issues that weren't allowed to be discussed unless she brought them up herself in testimony (including an unrelated SERIOUS vehicle accident and a prescription opioid problem).

Some of those things slip out and the jury is told to disregard them...but it makes you wonder: how many other facts are the juries not told for various legal reasons?

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u/knotallmen 15h ago

My trial was a "slip and fall" because a community just refused to use their HOA money to repair a sidewalk. They had someone who was no longer on the HOA board there because I guess she was at the time sitting with the defense and the defense just kept bringing up the lady was on methadone. I have no clue how the trial ended cause I was the alternate and forgot to look up the case after the fact. The former HOA board lady was just shooting daggers the entire time. Repair your damn sidewalk...

Completely unrelated note my neighbor whined about "his" tax dollars being used to repair the sidewalk in our neighborhood which completely doesn't understand how taxes work and I should have remembered to say that myself, my spouse, my kid all have had pretty bad falls from the shitty sidewalk and every Halloween when we go out with my kids grandparents I'm terrified of them tripping.

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u/knotallmen 18h ago

Yup the rules on juries are too prohibitive. Like if a juror could write a question to the judge and have that question honored (oh the irony) that would be something, but the one trial I was on the judge was immediately hostile. Like a grumpy substitute teacher or like a boomber/genx director of the business I worked for who started a meeting with "I don't want to be told this cannot be done" like such an unnecessarily negative and baseless start of a conversation and relationship.

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u/wayoverpaid 18h ago

I wanted to know what the business with the "Rule 213" was.

Judge could have said "Testimony needs to be disclosed ahead of time."

Judge instead said "You do not need to concern yourself with that."

I looked it up after. Made perfect sense.

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u/LostWoodsInTheField 16h ago

I was watching low level trials on youtube the other day, and I wasn't sure what state they were in, but the judge would go 'does the jury have any questions for this witness' and I thought that was the smartest thing in the world to do.

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u/Vio_ 18h ago

Every time I've had jury duty, I've been horribly sick.

Not "cough cough I'm dying pa from the black lung" excuse.

First time I had walking pneumonia.

Second time, I had the three-month influenza.

Anyway, I have a master's degree in forensic anthropology in international genetics where I researched forensic abuse, corruption, and incompetence.

They'll never take me as a juror lol.

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u/GreenIvyLace 18h ago

That’s a badass sounding degree and if you don’t mind sharing, I’d love to hear more about your work.

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u/matjoeman 18h ago

The lawyers are limited in how many people they can throw out and how much time they have for voir dire. I got on a jury when only being asked "will you hold it against the defendant if they don't testify" and I said "no". They didn't have time to ask me anything else.

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u/knotallmen 17h ago

I had something similar happen. It was long enough ago that there was a radio show Bill Handel on the Law which is now a podcast where people would just mention saying the listened to it as a code word for Jury nullification to get kicked off the jury without risking contempt of court, but by the time they got to me there wasn't any time left and I was made an alternate so I sat through the trial, took notes cause that's what I do, and never made a decision.

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u/grexl 17h ago

The numbers depend on jurisdiction, but yeah. I was on a jury in a criminal case involving an area of law that a relatively large proportion of the public has had some experience in.

Both counsels dismissed the maximum number of jurors allowed. Based on their questions it seemed like they were ranking us based on how much experience we had in that area. "How many of you have been involved with X?" Neither side asked questions toward me or anyone else who did not raise their hand.

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u/big_sugi 18h ago

We don't actually have any of those other jurors talking about this, though. Maybe it's just one person who was confused, or maybe they were joking, or maybe she was joking, or maybe she misunderstood and the person actually meant that studying for her role in Legally Blonde was the closest any of them had come to law school.

It's a perfect demonstration as to why hearsay is inadmissible.

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u/brakeb 18h ago

probably the "Halo effect"... "She's someone famous, we will give her the role of most import"

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u/PrincessPause 17h ago

I would absolutely 100% vote her as the foreman just for shits and giggles and tell her it was because I loved Legally Blonde

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u/atleastitsnotgoofy 18h ago

Exactly. I don’t believe this story. I’m sure part of it is true, but something is missing.

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u/liberty 17h ago

It could also just be completely made up...maybe other than certain verifiable/falsifiable facts, like that she served on a jury and was made the foreperson. Or perhaps even including those "facts" - because who's checking, and who'd even believe you or listen to you if you did?

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u/donkeytime 18h ago

Those are your peers.

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u/jxj24 18h ago

Only in the broadest, most generous sense of the word.

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u/FromFluffToBuff 18h ago

First thing I thought of. Oh dear God was George Carlin EVER right lol

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u/AnatidaephobiaAnon 18h ago

What a lot of people don't understand is when they think of your average dumb person, there are people who are even dumber than that.

My ex wife would believe something like this. There was an Ask Reddit thread a few days ago about how can you tell if someone is dumb and she checked off 90% of the comments. We were watching The Walking Dead she thought the show was genuinely happening down south. She thought that when it was night time here that it was dark all over the world. She thinks when actors who are straight perform as a gay character, that they were hired because they were bi or secretly gay. She thinks sex scenes during movies is actual sex and can't understand how the actors SOs are okay with it.....

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u/Munstrom 18h ago

My ex wife

Brother she must have been something else to look at because there's no way on this earth I could be with someone who thought the walking dead was a documentary.

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u/VictoryMotel 18h ago

These are unfortunately the perspectives of a young child.

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u/ChangeForAParadigm 18h ago

Everybody look at this guy with the smoking hot wife.

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u/magseven 17h ago

She must have been unbelievably hot.

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u/Repulsive_Stock9400 13h ago

I'm a lawyer and I volunteer a lot of legal aid in prisons, which are like little laboratories of stupidity.

A lot of inmates are really cognitively lacking; they're the dumbest of the dumb, just a hair smarter than the people who can't be held legally liable for their behavior because their cognitive function qualifies as a disability.

It's hard to communicate with these guys, because they just don't get so many things that everybody else gets automatically, without it being an issue at all. And it's very sad; we glorify criminals in pop culture and there are plenty of criminals who are kind of slick, but most of them are just really sad sacks who have no other way to navigate the world except doing things that are illegal, because they're too dumb to slot in otherwise.

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u/Scaevus 13h ago

A lot of people criticize plea bargains, but show them this story and ask them if they still want to put their freedom in the hands of a jury.

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u/ukexpat 18h ago

and they vote.

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u/Radiant_Jedi 16h ago

The scary thing is that the alternative is a bench trial with just a judge and no jury, and shocking amount of judges either don't know the law themselves, are biased, or are on just a fucking power trip.

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u/skincava 18h ago

Uhh it was a case about a dog bite.

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u/Training-Republic301 18h ago

We can hope that Reese is actually educated and could make proper decisions. So maybe their choice wasn't so bad overall being that the rest of the jury might be dumb as bricks

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u/Choochoonaynay 18h ago

They also vote!

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u/ItsSpaghettiLee2112 18h ago

At one point, Witherspoon remembered a juror expressing an opinion about the defendant based on the way she looked. The experience prompted her to reflect on the importance of understanding the law and taking jury service seriously. 'I started realising... people don't know much about the law,' Witherspoon said, describing some of the deliberations as troubling.

I've never served. Is it possible to talk to the judge privately? I would have told the judge bluntly that these jurors are really stupid.

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u/StuckinReverse89 19h ago

Kind feel that the fact that Witherspoon knows she isn’t as qualified because she just acted as a lawyer vs the people believing she went to law school because of a move already makes her more qualified to be foreperson than them though. 

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u/BarnacleDowntown8952 18h ago

She seems bright, is a successful actor, directs movies/TV shows, and likes reading to the extent she has a book club.

I would pick her to be foreman on that alone as opposed to randoms

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u/greg19735 16h ago

yeah like she's clearly going to be the leader of the gang. She's fucking reese witherspoon.

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u/milochuisael 14h ago

Lucky! Rich and famous AND she gets to have sex with Reese Witherspoon

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u/kirblar 15h ago

Public speaking exp makes her the obvious choice

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u/Ill_Emphasis3927 17h ago edited 17h ago

Funnily enough, if she had been to lawschool she'd probably been removed from the jury selection by voir-dire. Lawyers don't like having people who know the law on juries. Surprising to me they wouldn't have been able to get rid of her anyways, if I were a lawyer on either side I'd be worried she'd have increased influence on the rest of the jury because of her fame and if she'd be potentially negative to my case, I'd want her removed. And that's a valid enough reason to remove her.

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u/nestestasjon 18h ago

I think this would disqualify her because it could cause other members of the jury to be unduly influenced by her opinions.

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u/EpicCyclops 18h ago

You can't assemble 12 people together without at least one of them having outsized sway over the opinion of the others. The fact that juries elect a foreperson alone shows that is considered in the conceptualization of juries.

Really, juries do not need 12 competent people. They need one person of those twelve to be willing to say no if the charges do not make sense. As long as one person is competent, the jury can serve its role as a check on the charges brought by the government.

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u/exipheas 18h ago

In an ideal world it would disqualify them for being stupid.

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u/Juno_Malone 17h ago

Wait until you find out that, statistically, half of "a jury of your peers" will be of below average intelligence. Potentially more than half, if you reason that the smarter people are successfully getting out of jury duty in the first place.

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u/mpjjpm 15h ago

Being the foreperson of a jury requires zero qualification beyond basic literacy. Their only job is reading out a presenten statement and answering a few yes/no questions from the judge. The one time I served on a jury, the judge chose the foreperson and he picked the most average person from the group.

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u/Shopworn_Soul 18h ago

I have twice served on juries. Both times I served as foreman because no one else wanted to. Twice have I realized that a jury of my peers is almost entirely comprised of absolute fucking morons who are also kinda mean.

One juror couldn't do basic addition, and argued about it. One juror couldn't read properly, but thankfully did not. One juror flatly refused to consider any evidence at all, having made up their mind after selection.

More than a few simply did not want to be there and were strongly predisposed to penalize the defendant for no other reason than because they were annoyed, regardless of any facts presented to them.

Juries are kinda scary.

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u/happyklam 16h ago

Ugh the ultimate group project dynamic 

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u/Soft_Walrus_3605 15h ago

At least the stakes are so low /s

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u/Radiant_Jedi 16h ago

The description I have always heard is that "a jury is made up of 12 people who were too stupid to come up with a way of getting out of jury duty". Sadly, that seems fairly accurate.

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u/BlastFX2 13h ago

There's always that charmingly foreign guy who's excited to do his civic duty. Or so I've been led to believe.

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u/Some1-Somewhere 7h ago

Really need to pay them properly.

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u/jrobbio 15h ago

Yeah, I wasn't foreman in the two cases I was put on, but I really had to push people to consider the evidence was completely limited and you couldn't just judge on emotions and feelings. We knew something had gone down but the prosecution had gone for some fairly serious charges and frankly had done a shit job of proving that had happened. It all felt like a huge waste of time because the cases weren't done well to the point that they shouldn't have even gone before a judge, yet.

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u/Merle8888 15h ago edited 14h ago

On the flip side, a lot of people’s expectations for the type of evidence that should exist are set by police procedurals, in which the case of the week is treated as the only thing the whole department has going on. In real life this is never the case. So for instance, state crime labs are often backed up by months or more even with just samples from really serious crimes, you’re not likely to have forensic evidence on a misdemeanor. But people see absolute top of the line evidence (colored by fiction of course, things like zooming in the cameras to get a better resolution just aren’t a thing irl) on TV and expect every little case to get all of that. Then find not guilty when that’s not the reality. 

Edit: there’s a term for this, the CSI Effect. 

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u/Indigocell 12h ago edited 7h ago

The CSI effect cuts both ways. For example, many juries put more weight on certain "junk science" techniques/evidence used to convict in cases. Such as blood spatter analysis, or handwriting analysis, bite mark analysis, etc. edit: typo

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u/drunkshinobi 15h ago

For a jury system like this to be functional we need proper education and for people to not be working themselves to death for survival. So they have the brain power to make a proper decision and aren't burnt out and just wanting to be at home in bed before they even start. But then those juries would be smart enough and able to pay attention to prosecute the rich. They would be smart enough to not to keep letting a corrupt government do what it is currently doing.

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u/TheeAntelope 12h ago

I select juries for a living

It's a fucking crap-shoot.

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u/Generic_user_person 18h ago

A few years ago I was at a convention and met some voice actors.

For anyone who ever watched Yu-Gi-Oh, I met the dude who voices Yugi (granted I met several others but he is the one relevant to the story). Spoke with him for like 5-10 min, and when the topic came up about weird fan meeting experiences, he said the weirdest thing is that some people genuinely cannot seem to comprehend that he is an actor, and not the actual character within the show.

Like they'll approach and ask him questions like he is the writer, or worse like he himself IS Yugi. It was a bizarre hearing this from him, as I'd understand that behavior from a child, but not grown adults. And from how he described it, it didn't seem like a one off thing either.

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u/wayoverpaid 18h ago

I remember soap opera stars talking about how they'd get hate mail for the shit their character did on the show.

Meanwhile I'm pretty sure if I ever saw some actors I'd be like "Wow you were amazing in X, I hated your character so much, you were wonderful." Or not, because I am not the kind to go up and talk to an actor.

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u/dino-sour 17h ago

There's and episode of Friends where the character Joey (who is an actor on a soap opera) meets a stalker fan who 1000% think he is the character he plays on the soap opera.

Crazy to think that actually happens and isn't just a sitcom subplot for laughs.

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u/TravelerSearcher 18h ago

I know there are some actors who have had a certain sway on the story or arc of their character, more common in live action movies and shows though.

Like Carrie Fisher and Harrison Ford famously workshopped lines in Star Wars. Carrie herself was a script doctor too.

And actors also try to get in the head of their characters, that's part of acting in general.

But yeah, a dub is a different beast, and then even considering that the actor is actually the character in any true sense of the word is another level entirely.

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u/Zuwxiv 15h ago

Carrie herself was a script doctor too

IIRC, for a number of years, she was the script doctor. If you were having problems, she's who you'd want to bring it to.

She was involved in Hook, which has generally poor reviews because people are stupid and wrong.

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u/RizzwindTheWizzard 15h ago

Anybody who thinks Hook is bad needs to be taken out back, they're clearly beyond saving.

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u/BlastFX2 13h ago

Joseph Tribbiani also famously writes a lot of his own lines.

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u/Shevek99 18h ago

David Duchovny, that is a sceptic person, was tired of people stopping him on the street and asking him about all kind of conspiracy theories, because of the X Files.

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u/E-NTU 18h ago

Look at how some people get really into something like an info graphic of spaceship size comparisons... like seriously in awe of how big a made up ship is compared to some other made up ship... not too surprising.

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u/matjoeman 18h ago

That's even more strange because it's animated.

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u/Lendyman 18h ago

I expect that not all of them believed she went to law schools. This kind of story tends to get exaggerated because it's a lot more interesting if the entire jury thought you went to light law school then just if it were one or two dumb people. Although I wouldn't be surprised if more of the group thought she might have more understanding of the legal system because she was in a legal movie. That, I could believe.

Also, anybody who knows anything about Witherspoon knows that she is has a really strong academic background and is very strong at business. She's an extremely accomplished and intelligent person. I don't think having her as the jury Foreman would be a bad choice, honestly.

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u/SinkPhaze 18h ago

Without being in the room and only reading the headline this sounds like the sort of stupid joke my grandpa would make as he nominated her so he doesn't have to stand up and speak in front if the whole court room later. Even reading the article I don't know that I'd rule out it being a joke

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u/MoldyDucky 18h ago

I think you nailed it. The headline absolutely reeks of "over-exaggerated conclusion to make it more eye grabbing" rather than what is probably a more realistic consensus of, "hey, we gotta pick someone, might as well go with someone more knowledgeable than the rest of us. If she was in a couple of legal movies that makes her more qualified than an average joe". I'd pick her too!

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u/Overly_Long_Reviews 17h ago edited 14h ago

There was a really great sitcom called The Grinder about an actor who played the lead role in a long-running legal drama heading back to his hometown to try to become an actual lawyer. Except he tries to do it using the same antics frequently shown on the show and not by doing any of the actual work of becoming a lawyer. Yet, because he was a famous TV actor, everyone kind of accepts it and goes along with his behavior to the shock and frustration of his brother who is an actual lawyer.

It was a great series, it started Rob Lowe and Fred Savage, with some truly hilarious cameos from Timothy Olyphant. Unfortunately Fred Savage was a menace on set which was a contributing factor in the series getting canceled.

I mention all this because there's this hilarious exchange between the two brothers in the pilot:

Dean Sanderson: Let's say you're in a restaurant and Noah Wyle is two tables down. You go into cardiac arrest, you don't think Noah Wyle could step in and help? Stewart Sanderson: Yes he could help, by calling a doctor, because he is an actor.

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u/AdoringCHIN 18h ago

This kind of story tends to get exaggerated because it's a lot more interesting if the entire jury thought you went to light law school then just if it were one or two dumb people.

To be fair the source is Fashion Times. Something tells me it's not exactly a bastion of journalistic excellence. But since this sub bans actual legit news sources for some reason all we get are these garbage websites.

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u/ncnotebook 17h ago

Something tells me it's not exactly a bastion of journalistic excellence.

Didn't Legally Blonde teach us not to judge a book by its cover?

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u/-Badger3- 16h ago

What makes more sense? That the people in the jury didn't understand movies aren't real life, or that they were just joking and she didn't get it? Or that this whole anecdote didn't really happen.

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u/Motor-Boating 18h ago

To be fair... The fact that she is a functional adult pretty much means she was probably the most qualified of the bunch.

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u/Ismhelpstheistgodown 19h ago

I served on a jury and was a foreman. I remain proud and impressed by the seriousness of à diverse lot. Conscientious people doing the work

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u/tradvy43 18h ago

Haha the American public are downright morons.

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u/ThunderSmurf48 18h ago

I think that if the jury is that dumb it should be an immediate mistrial

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u/1RehnquistyBoi 19h ago edited 18h ago

think of how stupid the average person is.

And then realize that half of them are stupider than that. -George Carlin

Edit: I made a mistake. This is the correct quote from George Carlin.

My apologies.

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u/DragonBank 19h ago

That's not what he said. Deconstruct your statement, and you will note why it makes no sense.

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u/Mr_Baronheim 18h ago

Good catch. You are top half.

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u/Rich-Pomegranate1679 19h ago

He said, "Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that".

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u/corpulentFornicator 19h ago

The line begins "think how stupid the average American is" but the rest is generally right.

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u/SgtFinnish 18h ago

To be fair, if they thought legally blonde was a documentary they definitely chose the right woman to be the foreman. As in thank god they didn't choose anyone else.

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u/Unfair_Scar_2110 18h ago

Isn't she a method actor? Then didn't she go to law school? /s

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u/sth128 18h ago

and thought “Legally Blonde” was a documentary.

They're not ALL "historical documents." Surely, you don't think Gilligan's Island is a...

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u/holubtsi-on-fire 18h ago

The upsetting part isn’t that they voted for Reese Witherspoon, but that they get to vote for real government officials - including president.

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u/xv_boney 18h ago

Trump is president because a reality tv show pretended he was a successful businessman.

People still think he was a legendary success instead of an extraordinary failure because of that show.

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u/czar4684 19h ago

Legally Blonde is a documentary. And the events happened in real time.

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u/aramis34143 18h ago

I mean, from a random pool of 11 other people, if I had to choose a bodyguard and Keanu Reeves happened to be there...

 

I'm just saying, let's at least see some footage of Reese doing drills on the firing law range

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u/SpussyHitsDifferent 17h ago

these people vote and breed.

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u/buttgers 17h ago

"At one point, Witherspoon remembered a juror expressing an opinion about the defendant based on the way she looked."

Society has been cooked for a while, but boy having your life depend on the opinion of your peers is terrible.

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u/ChornWork2 17h ago

people have been known to embellish stories...

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u/Critical_Jump_6933 14h ago

My immediate reaction was, “this just sounds like a mostly fake, but fun, anecdote someone would tell on the Graham Norton show”. Come to find out, she told the story on the Graham Norton show

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