How are we supposed to convene an impartial jury for a trial involving high profile political people? [USA]

WtfEvenIsExistence3️@reddthat.com to No Stupid Questions@lemmy.world – 106 points –

Supporters of the person would just vote non-guilty and opponents would just vote guilty. It would just result in hung juries over and over.

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An "impartial" jury doesn't mean one where every member is ignorant or has no prior opinions relevant to the case.

It's one where the members are willing to set aside their previous knowledge and opinions, and evaluate the evidence that's presented to them.

How does the court system evaluate that? That seems like a super hard thing to check.

Jury selection usually involves asking the prospective jurors various questions, with the lawyers on each side being allowed to dismiss jurors they think will be biased.

jury selection is a very tedious process where every juror is interviewed by the judge and possibly both sides. They get whittled down by the court before being fully assigned, and then the prosecution and defense get to boot a certain number of jurors.

advising on jury selection is actually very lucrative business with both sides dishing out massive amounts of cash to make those checks.

in any case, in this situation, it's not that they're looking for unbiased jurors, it's that they're looking to balance out the biases of the individual jurors with jurors of apposing bias. I mean, you'd have to be living under a rock at this point to not have a bias as far as trump is concerned.

But what if the person balancing the biases is biased?

They are. One is the prosecutor and the other is the defense.

Judges normally follow a very strict procedure on who to kick, like people that may have worked for trump or family, etc, so it’s at least supposed to be objective. The lawyers are the ones sorting subjectively

What if you die stepping out of the shower? All choices have consequences and nothing is perfect, at some point you have to accept that certain things are not and cope anyway.

You can't just balance out the bias though.

If one juror just plain will not return a guilty or not guilty verdict, then the whole trial is for naught.

Pretty sure it’s a hung jury and they do it again (or bring in an alternate that’s been in the trial watching every thing as well.)

You’re right it’s a problem. Would you prefer trial by combat?

For Trump? Yes!

I’d prefer trial by ordeal. Hog tie him and toss him in a pond. Sinking? Innocent. Floating guilty.

The problem is this system would almost certainly opress more people.

Our current system is quite flawed. But it’s not nearly as flawed as it could be

The problem with Trump is that he's a known quantity to anyone who has lived on Earth for the last 50 years. He's a compulsive liar, literally about everything and a vile, disgusting person, as well.

Knowing that, I would find it impossible to "just consider the facts" and believe that maybe . . . just maybe, this is the one time he's telling the truth.

Thankfully we put career criminals, well-known in their communities, who people have heard of, on trial all the time. Could you imagine if "I'm too famous as a dirtbag to be tried by a jury of my peers" was a defense?

Just because you don't agree with him doesn't make what he says a lie. Biden has been caught lying nonstop about his son's business and I'll bet that you're just fine with it.

Nice what-aboutism, Biden's son isn't even an elected official in any capacity. False equivalence is a red flag logical fallacy.

So you're going to ignore Joe Biden using his position as VP to take in money illegally.... Nice lack of morals.

Not who you responded to, but while most politicians grift a bit, Trump has been shown to grift his base like there's no tomorrow. I recall that there was fine print on one of the "donate to stop the steal" campaigns that signed people up for recurring donations when they thought they were making a one-time contribution. The mountain of evidence, and your trying to defend him, robs you of any credibility.

Nobody's ignoring it. There's plenty of room to investigate that too. Corruption of any source SHOULD be confronted and removed regardless of affiliation, but that wasn't the point of the exercise. Besides, your assumption of my lack of morals from a single reply (and regarding a what-aboutism to boot) is just another logical fallacy. There's more of them too if you're looking for more ways to be an unreasonable contrarian online.

No one gives a shit about Hunter Biden outside the Fox News bubble, guy. As for me, having a son who does drugs with sex workers is about the last thing for which I hate Joe Biden.

It actually makes me respect Hunter a little bit. If you're gonna be a fail-son, at least have fun with it.

I don’t understand why, when people talk about what a dirtbag Trump is, so many people respond with, “Yeah, but person X is also a dirtbag.” Like yeah, so? That’s beside the point of this conversation. That person is also a dirtbag. Why don’t you start a thread to talk about that?

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Absolutely right. "Impartial" doesn't mean you've never heard of the person, or never seen them on the news, or don't live near them, or have no opinion of them, or haven't heard or believe things about what they've done. It means just what you said, that whoever is picked will be able to listen to the evidence presented by both sides and make a decision based on that evidence. Apparently a huge number of people believe this is functionally impossible for humans to do, which is pretty sad if you've let your politics overwhelm your reason to such a degree that you think no one else can be objective either.

It's a classic shithead defense to try and tell a judge "the paper did a piece on my crimes and everyone read it, so I can't get a fair trial!!" Well guess what, that never works, for anyone, ever. There is no such thing as "too famous" for justice, there is no such thing as "too infamous" for justice. And there is no such thing as "the vast majority of people in NY and DC and GA hate me so badly because of who I am and what I've done that no one in those states can be allowed to judge me for my acts."

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