Juror Misconduct

Juror misconduct leads to mistrials, fines and huge emotional cost, so how are courts dealing with it? Reads the headline, so I read the article.

For a better description than I can give, read Richard Dawkins “Unweaving the Rainbow” , the chapter titled “Barcodes at the bar”, but better to read the whole book.

I reached the following sentences: “She cites another recent example of a trial involving a car driven by a police officer. A juror with a background in mathematics independently measured the ground clearance on a similar make of car, to reach his own conclusion about what happened. "He believed he knew better than the evidence that had been provided by the court," Ms Hall says.” And, thinking of my mathematics background, reflected that instinctively I would think of measuring (“Management Measures”) and at the very least arithmetic devices for making a good estimate.

I once used parking bays as a unit of measurement in a court argument, and had my reasoning thrown out because I hadn’t used metres or yards and feet, something that a lawyer can understand.

That I used standard-sized car bays as a unit forbade the lawyers from using the numeric measurements as a ratio, so although the landlord claimed to have re-surfaced the entire parking lot, where my seventh-floor photographic survey of the lot showed that only a third had been resurfaced, was thrown out. The landlord went on to claim the high expense in favour of yet another annual rental increase.

And yes, I am still bitter about the stupidity of the court system.

In the example given above, I took digital photos of numbered bays, printed them out, and tried to use them as evidence (only 17 of 51 bays were re-surfaced) but no; lawyers and magistrates are not capable of thinking in any units when it comes to ratios.

There are valid points to be made about searching the internet for facts. Big Bubba Joe-Kay of Slippery Rock Arkansas is possibly the world-expert on gamma radiation’s effect on embryonic salamanders, but I doubt it; whereas Richard Dawkins ought to be studied in matters affecting life’s DNA; for sure!

But getting facts from Richard Dawkins is getting facts via the Internet, and courts use Big Bubba Joe-Kay of Slippery Rock as their lowest-common denominator, instead of striving for accuracy.

The expert testimony is given by experts chosen by the lawyers because, the lawyers claim (and for once I believe them) that they don’t know enough about the gamma radiation’s effect on embryonic salamanders. The trouble here is that the Arkansas lawyer will choose you-know-who whereas the UK lawyer will choose Richard Dawkins, and in Slippery Rock AR, everyone can understand you-know-who, but Richard Dawkins accent is beyond comprehension.

The law courts are built upon logic, and that is good. The idea that all present should use common data is good (If the evidence is not presented, then nobody gets to argue about it; if the evidence IS presented, then that evidence can be challenged in a way that everyone is aware of it. Which is why, I believe, the judge removes the jury while lawyers debate the finer aspects of “The Law”.

But the clincher for me is that I am an educated man; I read extensively, especially on matters of science and technology, so when someone in court mentions, say, “light” I think in terms of “photons” and the number of photons that strike my body daily. If someone wants to say that a laser beam “moved the object” I know that that can’t be so. That sort of knowledge is in my head, no matter where I gained it.

My head possesses very little data about current and past shows on TV; I don’t watch TV. My mind contains an amazing collection of data gleaned from books AND over the past thirty years, from THE INTERNET.

So telling jurors not to turn to the internet for background data is pointless; I have already harvested data from the internet, and carry that inside my head, no matter where I am.

Sigh.

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