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/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.