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/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/ragnaroksunset 18h ago

One person saying no doesn't remove improperly levied legal jeopardy, though. It may just mean a mistrial and a new set of 12 potentially incompetent people.

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u/VariousAir 18h ago

Sure, but the standard isn't to remove legal jeopardy completely. There's no way to make a perfect system. A mistrial isn't a failure of the system, it's the system working as intended to halt improper prosecution. Even if they try again, the point of gathering 12 people isn't to guarantee acquittal for the innocent, it's to act as a circuit breaker against a rubber stamped conviction.

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u/ragnaroksunset 18h ago

That's not really my point. My point is just that hitting the reset button on a flawed process just to run the same flawed process again is not a check on the flawed process.

And further, if the reason you want to run a check isn't to improve outcomes, then that's as bad as a rubber-stamped conviction.

We should neither want nor accept systems that produce outcomes essentially at random.

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u/VariousAir 17h ago

that's literally what a check is. a check doesn't mean "this process can never produce a bad outcome". It means there's a mechanism capable of stopping the process when something goes wrong.

If a juror says 'no, the government hasnt proven this' and that prevents a conviction, the jury has objectively acted as a check on the prosecution. That the government is still allowed to try again and sufficiently prove their case isn't some failing of the justice system. a hung jury isn't a declaration of innocence.

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u/ragnaroksunset 17h ago

there's a mechanism capable of stopping the process when something goes wrong.

But my original point is that it doesn't stop the process. It just resets it without changing anything that produced the error that tripped the check.

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u/VariousAir 17h ago

It just resets it without changing anything that produced the error that tripped the check.

that's not true at all.

the prosecution and the defense both now have the information that the trial that previously occurred resulted in a hung jury.

the prosecution can now examine their strategy and revise their presentation of the evidence, or search for additional evidence to reinforce what they have.

The defense can do the same.

None of this happens in a vacuum, you seem to think the exact same trial would play out exactly the same all over again.

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u/ragnaroksunset 17h ago

Not at all. The laws of physics simply do not forbid a situation where someone is innocent of the accusations, but the case is presented to more than one juries incapable of coming to a clear conclusion one way or the other about that. Not because the prosecution or defense are incompetent, but because the juries are (which is what we're talking about - what the lawyers learn from a hung jury is irrelevant).

You seem to think that the time, stress, reputational harm and opportunity cost of being put on the stand for a crime you did not commit are zero and that a system that extends this experience is working correctly.

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u/VariousAir 13h ago

what the lawyers learn from a hung jury is irrelevant is a pretty convenient assumption to just slip in.

The second trial has two lawyers who have already watched the first trial fail to produce a unanimous verdict. They now know how the evidence was received, what arguments worked, what arguments didn't, and where the jury got stuck.

Of course another jury can hang. That doesn't mean the second trial is just the first trial with twelve replacement bodies.

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u/orange-shades 17h ago

While true, the cost of retrying a case is generally prohibitive. So yeah, just one standing out doesn't prevent a retrial in theory, but it does in practice.

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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/whooptheretis 16h ago

But if you’re smart, then would “your peers” also be smart?

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u/Juno_Malone 16h ago

No because "a jury of your peers" simply means "a jury built from the general public", not specifically "your peers"

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u/whooptheretis 16h ago

so, not one's peers?

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u/drunkshinobi 15h ago

"Your peers" is based on amount in your bank account and the worth of your assets.

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u/munoodle 18h ago

That would have been up to the attorneys during jury selection, and neither of them believed this would influence the outcome

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u/guff1988 18h ago

Not automatically or by rule but during selection they are typically dismissed by one of the two sides almost immediately.

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u/Alatarlhun 16h ago

Every jury would be hung or convict just to speed up jury duty if no one had the ability to influence other members of the jury.

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u/Crowbarmagic 16h ago

Seems to me this is a risk whenever any celebrity/high profile person is on the jury. A lot of people are more likely to listen to their opinion and judgement (or the other way around--you already dislike someone and therefore less likely to agree with that person).

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u/pocurious 18h ago

Ironically, you have missed the point, which is that these people should not be trusted with their own opinions. 

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u/nestestasjon 17h ago

Ackshuallyyyyyy