The Good, The Bad & The Ugly Jury Lives On

Letter to Romans: It’s been said “America’s Toxic Divide Reaches the Jury Room.” Yet isn’t part of the Constitution’s beauty … and beast … that from the get go it rolled the dice in favor of the “reasonable man” standard & diverse, divided juries?

So, we’re stuck, as we always have been, with the good, the bad & the ugly jury. But that’s not quite what the recent WSJ acknowledges, although it concedes “dissension in jury rooms is as old as the US jury system.” Instead, its premise concludes, “Trial lawyers & jury consultants say an erosion of trust in the justice system, more rigid viewpoints & starker political divides have made pitched juror battles more common.” The premise is set up by a real Florida jury hearing an opioid-related case, in which the participants tried to get a comradery thing going on Halloween by throwing a themed party … it didn’t go well as the participants showed up with costumes angering one another. This, we’re told, is an example of how deeply things have changed so that the experts are seeing more “pitched battles … making it harder for 12 strangers to even get along, much less agree on whether to send someone to prison …”

No doubt, the lawyers & consultants are feeling today’s super-charged political & tech influenced legal environment when picking a jury. Yet, I recall writing similar articles decades ago in the midst of such social upheavals. For example, stemming from the Sanctuary City riots, the 9/11 outrage, Viet Nam War Protests & Civil Rights Movement. Legal historians would likewise recall the heightened stress in picking a biased-free jury during the Korean War & WW II. And how many books have been written on the failings of our legal jury system during the Westward expansion & after the Civil War finally put an end to slavery? The good news: Our imperfect human jury system has endured throughout. It remains & will still be the best in the world next year.

Davd Soul