A confederacy of dunces

(we learn in this same story that Neal believes Israel "oppresses" the Palestinians

What do you call what Israel does to the Palestinians, Rod? I call it occupation. I can forgive Neal for being too easy on the Israelis.

Rod, I think a lot of us who are relatively intelligent, knowledgable, and well-read and take jury duty seriously (and also probably spend a lot of time around the same types of people) forget there is a whole swath of our "peers" who are unintelligent, don't think logically, or aren't able to keep their biases out of their duty as a juror. It probably happens a lot.

Unfortunately, I don't know what ths solution to this problem is short of something along the lines of what rebeccat suggested.

I just went through jury duty, and my experience has me looking at another aspect of this. I don't know the details of how a jury is selected, but clearly the two lawyers eliminate those most likely to rule against them. In a complicated trial such as this one, I would expect the defendents did everything they could to get the least intelligent and least attentive jurors possible - barring any anti-Islamic or anti-Palestinian biases.

In my day of jury duty I was in a 30 person jury pool for a civil trial involving a man who had run a red light and injured a woman in another car. The defendent had already admitted liability. The suit was about the extent of civil damages. The two lawyers had to pick 12 jurors from the 30. The prosecution began the jury questioning by asking about the (potential) juror's attitudes towards lawyers and the number of lawsuits (i.e. "will you think this is frivolous?"), and their willingness to award money for damages. Many expressed sentiments along the lines that there are too many frivolous lawsuits, but awarding money for damages is appropriate. The questions got more pointed, so that it seemed pretty clear what type of case he intended to present. I think I was nixed based on my response to 2 questions:

do you think its appropriate to award damages due to inconvenience?
(my answer: Pain and suffering, yes, but when something falls to the level of inconvenience it is far less likely to be worthy of monetary compensation)

have you ever had chronic neck, shoulder or low back pain? (my answer: yes, for about 5 years, including having my R foot feel like its on fire for a few months and then mostly go numb for about 3 years - ciatic nerve issues. I finally got it under control with exercise, physical therapy and yoga. I strongly suspect he thought I'd feel his client could deal with a lot of her own problems if she'd get off her fat behind. He was likely right.)

The people who were picked for the jury were largely those that had not voiced much opinion or had many relevant experiences.

Point is, I doubt the 12 jurors on the Holy Land case were the best qualified of the jury pool. For a case of this magnitude and complexity I would hope the jury pool would have been larger than 30. In a sample of, say, 50-100 there should be enough bright, attentive and unbiased people to form a competent jury. If, however, the defense has a compelling reason to keep the competent off the jury, they're not likely to get on. This may have happened here.

My one jury duty experience was awful. One statement from the judge would have saved us from the ridiculous arguing and deliberation we had to go through, including members of the jury deliberately ignoring explicit instructions re: what could and could not be considered in the case. The legal system, as well as the legislative system, is a mess, isn't it? My best advice is to obey the law and hope you're never arrested, and if you are, to get a darn good lawyer to do exactly what you don't want to happen in cases like the Holy Land Trial - i.e., get a jury that will rule in your favor.

If, however, the defense has a compelling reason to keep the competent off the jury, they're not likely to get on.

It is really amusing to Rod watch Rod Dreher squirm with this outcome. He convicted the HLF in his mind so easily and so long ago that anything other guilty verdicts on all counts induces a paralyzing cognitive dissonance. The only plausible explanation for Rod is an ignorant/incompetent jury, and so a nominally professional Christian journalist resorts to petty ad hominems ("subliterate" "gaggle of morons") for those who don't see things as he does. How does Dreher know that the complexities of the lengthy, controversial trial and the vagaries of their own personal lives led to their poor behaviour as jurists?

And juror Neal was apparently too smart because the didn't trust the testimony of anonymous star witnesses.

And of course Rod still can't bring himself to admit that the trial was at its core about Israel's illegal occupation of Palestine.

I think the jury showed at least as much mental acuity as Rod in this particular case. And Corn-nut bandits show a lot more class and integrity than Dreher does on this issue.

"IF they HAD to have a jury, they should have ensured minimal education standards for all, and included a certain number of highly educated men and women and/or people with managerial experience. I'm not sure it's at all legal to select a jury by those standards. But in cases of such complexity, perhaps it should be."

Dear God. Well at least you acknowledged it was elitist before you started.

Juries are complex things. Highly educated people make lots of bad decisions and are unable to sort through evidence. Take a look at Congress, or the White House, or your local school board, or even your local PTA. As I said previously when Rod wrote so dismissively about the "blue collar" jurors who were stupid, the irony is that blue collar workers are arguably an ideal jury for a prosecution conspiracy theory. Educated jurors, according to jury consultants, are more suspicious of conspiracy theories and tend to be anti-prosecution.

Let's not kid ourselves. If this jury was made up of Rhodes Scholars and Mensa members, Rod would be complaining about the fact that liberals or educated people shouldn't be on the jury and that everyday, salt-of-the-earth people like his kin in Lousiana would have done a better job. You can bet a shopping spree at Whole Foods on it.

Daniel, I didn't mean they'd have to have a college degree. I mean they'd have to be literate. My definition of literate is, able to read an editorial in a newspaper and understand not only factual content, but author's intent and possible biases, as well as any glaring logical inconsistencies.

I don't think that's so much to ask. Newspapers are typically written at the 8th grade level. Reading between the lines takes that level of education, plus enough further education AND/OR experience to be able to get inside someone else's head and understand their motives.

Include at least one very well educated person, and one with leadership experience and I think you'd have a very good mix. But then, as I said, I'm not sure what standards they use to select a jury, having never served on one, nor known anyone who has, to my knowledge. It wouldn't surprise me if the choices weren't made with the best intentions.

lrs: The jury pool was a bit different in the 18th century than it is today. You don't think Thomas Jefferson would leave his fortune in the hands of a "white trash" farmer from down the road who had no slaves, do you? Nope. His peers would be the Byrds, Carters, Lees, Masons, Madisons, Randolphs, Taylors, and all the other fine gents that made up the Old Dominion tidewater.

Professional juries are the way to go.

Rod asks: "Has Neal never heard of the ad hominem fallacy?"

Elsewhere, he describes the jury or jurors as:

"a confederacy of dunces."

"a gaggle of morons."

"that particular clod."

"to see his subliterate request makes me wonder about the caliber of people..."

"these poltroons"

If Mr. Neal hasn't heard of the ad hominem fallacy, you certainly have educated him about ad hominem attacks.

I understand that you followed the case closely, Rod, but you might want to keep in the back of your mind that God made those who are of less than average intelligence, and He loves them just as much as He loves those of us who did well on the SAT. These jurors, it seems, did not do a very good job, but they also didn't seek out this particular duty, one of those rare tasks that is really stressful and really boring (particularly to someone without high interest in law, politics, or foreign relations) at the same time and requires people without a post-secondary education to do something more challenging than and completely different from their everyday jobs. I'm an attorney, and I think that being a juror on one of these long trials would be an unimaginably awful task. Since you followed the trial, I'll take your word for it that these jurors deserve criticism, but they don't deserve what you, a professional journalist with a national audience, dealt them. This post wasn't your best moment, Rod.

Wouldn't a professional jury ultimately just become a star chamber? And how is a professional jury the peers to an inner-city kid being charged with a drug offense, or a rural meth lab owner, or . . .

Juries are flawed, but they are the best system we have of bringing public service and fairness into our judicial system. If there had been a bench trial and the government had lost, the neocons would be making nasty allegations about the political beliefs of the judge or trying to trash his/her record for gain.

My view is that we need to engage in a campaign to educate Americans about the responsibilities as well as the rights of citizenship. If we want better juries, we need a better education system. It won't eliminate the occasional bad or disinterested juror, but it would be a step forward.

Juries are a remarkably successful institution, and the idea of "professionalizing" them is appalling. Why not also limit participation in elections to "professional voters"?

When juries get a complex case wrong, it's often the fault of the prosecution's failure to make its case clearly. Or, as in the infamous OJ debacle, it's a combination of incompetence by the prosecution and the judge.

I think everyone can agree that, combining his screed against the Jury of Not My Peers with the kvetching about JK Rowling's musing about a fictional character, and adding in the dire warning that we are seeing the advent of the Great Pumpk, er, Unraveling, that this has not been Rod's best week for the blog.

He's fretting about the dentist. Sustained fear, like sustained pain, can definitely keep a person on edge.

Mrs. Pringle

May I remind you constant kvetchers -- Daniel, Will, K Street, I'm talking about you -- that if you don't like what you read on this blog, you don't have to keep coming back. Something keeps you coming back. Perhaps you are masochists.

May I also remind you that according to the interview Neal gave, some on the jury (not him) wanted to convict without deliberation. That prospect frightens me, and I was hoping for a conviction. It's genuinely scary to imagine that defendants might go to jail for life because jurors in this or any case would decide that they'd really rather not be bothered looking at the evidence.

I understand that it chaps your ideological bottoms to read my rant against this jury, but you should trouble yourselves to read the actual stories I linked to. There's no way you can approve of this jury's behavior. Will, I know you wanted to see these Hamas-honeys skate, but you should recognize that they didn't, in fact, skate, and will have to be tried again because of this jury's shenanigans. Is that really fair to them?

"My view is that we need to engage in a campaign to educate Americans about the responsibilities as well as the rights of citizenship. If we want better juries, we need a better education system. It won't eliminate the occasional bad or disinterested juror, but it would be a step forward."

It might even teach people the difference between a disinterested juror, which is ideally what we want, and an uninterested one, which is what we all too often get.