Quote:
Originally Posted by Tribesman
I wonder why people are still going on about what a fictional jury will do when a grand jury has already looked at it and decided the indictment is fitting murder.
Is there some magical formula where 12 future people will view the case completely differently in regards to law than the 12 who already looked at it?
|
I take it you have not sat on a US Grand Jury.
I did for 3 months a few years ago.
The GJ is given the charge the DA wishes to bring. ONLY the DA's case is presented. The GJ then virtually rubber stamps the indictment. In 3 months I was empaneled for only about a weeks worth of days over that period. We worked 8 hours, and did multiple criminal indictments per day. There were hundreds of charges, usually several per case. In a FEW of the cases we indicted on fewer than all the charges. Maybe 5%. No one was NOT indicted for any crime. Not one. We all knew that we were not deciding anything other than "is it worth having a day in court?" We didn't suggest lesser charges to the DA or asst DA, we assumed they knew what they were doing.
You can, as they say, indict a ham sandwich.
Indictments mean nothing at all.
PS---I never suggested that juries
should ignore instructions, but that they
could ignore instructions.