Comments by "SmallSpoonBrigade" (@SmallSpoonBrigade) on "Juror Removed From Trial DURING Deliberations" video.

I was on a very long trial like that once. It wasn't as long, but even with all the work that the judge and attorneys were putting into cutting the unnecessary witnesses out of the process, it was still a month. One of the things I remember was how much weight one side wanted us to put on the fact that one of the witnesses was held in contempt for simply not showing up for a deposition without informing the attorneys and trying to find an alternate date that would work. I'm not sure about the other jurors, but I didn't personally see how that was relevant to the testimony. By the end of it, I hated both sides so much that I would have taken the more than million dollars that was at issue and given it to pretty much anybody else or even just made them watch me light it on fire. But, sometimes that's what being impartial looks like. You don't have to like or respect both parties, just as long as your feelings aren't impacting your judgement to favor one party or the other.
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@scott_johnson_ That would be a violation of the affirmations that jurors are required to make when they're summoned for jury duty. And you're even asked another time about anything else that the attorneys didn't think to ask that you think might impact your ability to be impartial. So, no I don't know that there's a literal law that says you can't be racist, but there are all sorts of rules that require that jurors not be partial to one party or the other to the extent it's possible.
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@kevinfloyd808 That's my assumption because there's an awful lot of ways that you can stand up for white people that aren't problematic. And in some cases failing to do so could be equally problematic to doing so for racist reasons. I've met enough black people to know that it could easily have been either way. Like any other group. You've got ones that are looking for vengeance, and you've got ones that are more fair-minded and thick-skinned that aren't allowing their personal experiences to unfairly bias their opinions. And without knowing where that particular person is on that spectrum, it's hard to say.
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@ThePooper3000 Probably a combination of random chance and being listed on one of the sources that the court uses for identifying potential jurors. Also, it takes a lot of jurors sometimes to find the fewer than 2 dozen that they need to make up a jury. When I was on jury duty they went through over a thousand potentials just to find the 10 or so they needed for the civil trial that could be there an entire month and who were otherwise suitable for the case.
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Because you can't say that the verdict was impacted with any level of certainty. It may be sent back for a retrial, but when you've got a juror that has a credibility issue, there is no easy solution. Also keep in mind that this was a 9 week trial. As in extremely expensive and depending upon the actual verdict, it might not even matter. If the jury votes to acquit, then chances are that the juror didn't have any sort of impact on the proceeding. It's when they find the defendant guilty of various things that it could be an issue.
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Don't do it, jury nullification is something that screws up the legal system. If juries nullify verdicts that lead to the cases most likely to lead to a change of precedence being off limits for appeal. There's little interest in nullifying when you hate the defendant and the case seems cut and dry. It's the ones where it arguably shouldn't be a crime at all that are the ones that need to be appealed the most. If people keep nullifying the cases, it just means that more people are going to be subjected to the bad law as it won't ever get appealed and there's no right to a paid attorney to represents you.
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Yes, but by the same token, the attorneys should bring that up to impeach the witness. And generally, lawyers prefer to keep those sorts of people off the jury and have their own witnesses handle because it's more predictable.
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@jwrosenbury No, the whole point of a jury is to have a group weighing the evidence to try and get the fairest hearing of the evidence. The feelings get in there because we're talking about humans, not because it's a desired aspect of a jury. Feelings getting in there is a large part of why trials are often times not fair. It's great if you're a pretty white woman with money, and not so much for the rest of us.
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@thesaltyspacecowboy8531 This is just ignorant. Jury nullification is a byproduct of the prohibition on being tried for the same offense multiple times and the secrecy of the jury room. It's also something that ensures that we keep trying people for ridiculous things, as the cases that get nullified are the ones most likely to get overturned on appeal. Just because you don't understand it, doesn't mean the rest of us don't.
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@kenbrown2808 That's usually a matter of public record. You can usually look it up if you care to. Or you can arrange with one of the jurors that does deliberate to find out what the result was.
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It probably still is. The big thing that's changed is that it's more heavily covered. I'm in my 40s and it was always there and not really getting that much better very quickly. There was a period before I was born roughly the '40s through the '70s where it was improving dramatically. But, since then there hasn't been much improvement and these issues are mostly used by the wealthy to distract from the increased income inequality. Which is to be expected. Most of the work and progress that was really necessary was completed by then. By the '70s you had college educated black couples making more than white college educated white couples. And while there were definitely still issues with racism, the bulk of the necessary progress had been made. Going forward, there just wasn't the same easy projects to undertake and when you do largely achieve your goals, the infrastructure pushing it doesn't just go away. I think the only time that ever happened was when the March of Dimes largely stopped doing anything with Polio as it wasn't an issue and started to focus more broadly. For the most part, the sort of extreme views that lead to that impression are far less common than people think, they just get amplified by social media companies trying to keep people engaged with their site and the news media that hasn't had so little respect for the news in decades.
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