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/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/fallenmonk 14h ago

We find the defendant... quilty

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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/pihkal 1h ago

On the upside, the CSI effect has also led to juries demanding more physical evidence and down-weighting testimonials, which is a vast improvement. Even if witnesses are trying to tell the truth, human memory is not very good.

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u/Miserable-Inside1511 11h ago

I'm not saying that's a good thing, but is it a bad thing to demand better evidence before altering the course of someone's life? Innocent until proven guilty? Without proof and just a hunch, just conjecture...

There is a lot of infrastructure funding needed at least in the USA, I don't see why better evidence processing shouldn't be added to the list 

If it matters, fund it. If not, don't penalize people on gut feelings...

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u/Jackasaurous_Rex 4h ago

Yeah its not like the jury would be made aware of that, but if some compelling evidence isn’t presented purely because it couldn’t be processed in time, well tough shit, we shouldn’t just operate on assumptions when dealing with people’s lives.

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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/OkReference2581 15h ago

I couldn't agree more. I've done petit jury duty as Forman, Grand Jury as Forman. It does scare me on how stupid a juror can be. 

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u/Classic_Reply_703 14h ago

Yeah I served on a jury and my main takeaway was that if I ever get charged with something I am requesting a bench trial. In my case, the jury was similarly made of idiots and people who didn't GAF. One woman seemed dead set on voting one way but then when the majority was clearly leaning the other way, she literally said "Well it's almost dinner time, so whatever will get this over with faster." And it probably goes without saying no one paid any attention to jury instructions about factors we weren't supposed to consider like insurance (it was a car accident case). Absolutely horrifying.

All that's to say, I'd rather have my fate decided by 12 Reeses Witherspoon than the average jury.

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u/TemporalGrid 11h ago

Your lawyer will fight you to the death over doing that. They all believe (almost certainly correctly) that they have a lot better chance to sway those idiots than a judge.

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u/Holiday-Hustle 14h ago

Times like that you have to remember the Carlin bit where you take average intelligence and remember 50% of the population is dumber than that.