Comments by "SmallSpoonBrigade" (@SmallSpoonBrigade) on "Are Juries Really Told to Forget What They Just Heard?" video.

@davidh9638 And that's a good example of a jury coming to the right conclusion, even though the defendant was probably guilty. With the tampered evidence and LAPDs reputation at the time, the right verdict was an acquittal. He may also have been not guilty of the actual murder, but with the amount of evidence tampering involved in the case, a not guilty verdict was probably the only just verdict to make.
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The entire role of the jury is to weigh the provided evidence and decide if the prosecution, or plaintiff, has met the relevant burden of proof for the type of proceeding. That's it. It's an incredibly important role and one that comes with a fair amount of moral ambiguity at times, but it ultimately comes down to weighing the evidence that the parties provide and deciding what the result should be based on that and the level of proof needed to win the case.
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Thank god you were never impaneled on a jury then. Jury nullification screws up the system in ways that's hard to really protect against. It's not a right that juries have, it's a side effect of deliberation being done in private and jurors getting to make what is typically a final decision about the guilt or innocence of the defendant in the trial. The cases that would get nullified are the low-hanging fruit. They're the ones that are the most egregiously wrong with the most sympathetic defendants, in other words, the cases most likely to get overturned by higher courts and potentially resulting in new precedence to prevent people from even being charged in the first place. By nullifying, the jury is depriving the parties in the case of justice and depriving society at large an opportunity for the courts to reconsider a potentially wrong law.
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@thundercricket4634 That's not at all accurate. The job of the jury is to be the decider of the facts and the weigher of the evidence. Not whether or not the law was correct in the first place. The jury is to prevent the law from being applied to people where there's no, or insufficient, evidence to say that they performed the action they are accused of doing, not whether or not the action should be illegal. If an action is a crime and shouldn't be, there are other remedies for that. Juries going rogue and letting people off the hook prevents the crime from ever being evaluated by higher courts and sidesteps the legislators that are supposed to be writing better laws.
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When I was on a jury, it was a long trial and there were a fair number of parts where witnesses made comments that weren't admissible. Because the trial was rather long, as long as something wasn't written down, they weren't taken into consideration when deliberating. That being said, those comments weren't particularly spectacular. Had there been something so dramatic as the defendant admitting to guilt in a way that wasn't admissible, that might have been different. But, I think the attorneys screwed up because multiple witnesses weren't instructed to not engage in hearsay.
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Hey Steve, what about bench trials? Not only does that judge have to hear everything and see every potential piece of evidence, but they also have to disregard anything that isn't admissible to the trial when making their ruling.
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@willdejong7763 No, not in the least. The jury exists to determine whether or not the prosecution, or plaintiff, met their burden of proof to the relevant standard, nto whether or not the crime should be illegal in the first place. Perhaps it's different in other countries, but the reason the US has juries is so that there's somebody largely impartial to look at the evidence, listen to the testimony and decide whether the accusing party has met the relevant burden of proof. To allow the jury more than that is to risk a ton of unforeseen circumstances like what used to happen in the Southern US where juries would decide that they knew perfectly well that that white man murdered that black man, they just didn't think it should be a crime.
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@scottmcshannon6821 Because the rule of evidence exist for a reason. Yes, you can get situations like Michael Jackson where he managed to win multiple lawsuits by getting evidence buried, but it can also mean things like illegal confessions can be prevented from falsely convicting as well. There's also the issue of hearsay, it may be true that somebody said something that's relevant to the proceedings and true, but it should be coming from somebody that either said it themselves or is a party to the proceedings. Without that, then you have no way of knowing if the testimony is accurate to what was said. If you can't win the case without violating the rules, then you probably should be pleading out or settling the case as appropriate.
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I think lawyers are supposed to inform their witnesses as to what the basic rules are. They're not supposed to coach the witnesses about what to say, but the witnesses should be told that they can only testify about what they said/did/saw and what parties in the trial said or did.
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