Over 1,300 prospective jurors completed questionnaires for a chance to serve on a panel of jurors in Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s Boston Marathon Bombing trial. Of those prospective jurors, the judge presiding over the trial narrowed down the jury pool to just over 250 people through the process of voir dire. By personally interviewing each prospective juror individually, the judge is able to determine which of those jurors are the most qualified and competent to serve on a trial jury. The 250 jury prospects were eventually whittled down to a mere 18, 12 of whom sat on the jury panel for the duration of the trial and 6 of whom were alternates.
The final jurors selected for the trial consisted of 10 women and 8 men, all of whose careers varied as widely as their opinions on the death penalty. The jurors ranged in age from early twenties and thirties up to retirement age. The majority were middle to older aged Americans, mostly of Caucasian descent, however the youngest jury member was of Islamic heritage. The defense protested against the selection of a predominantly white jury, and even attempted to change the venue of the trial by moving it outside of Boston, but to no avail. The prosecution believed each and every juror had been carefully and
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In my opinion, I believe the jury selection process was conducted fairly and the final jurors selected to serve during the trial were selected properly, however I can also understand the defense’s concerns. Unfortunately, many people are unable to set their personal biases aside when it comes to race. People allow the skin color or religious beliefs of the accused, or the heinousness of the crime to cloud their judgement of the truth rather than let the evidence and witness testimony tell what really
Observe a Jury or Court Trial Student’s Name Institutional Affiliation Author’s Note Observe a Jury or Court Trial This court case involves a serial killer, Jeffrey Dahmer, convicted of killing about 17 men between 1978 and 1991 (Jeffrey Dahmer - Full Trial - Serial Killer, 2012). The jury is composed of seven men and seven women who were to determine if Jeffrey Dahmer was guilty of the multiple murders. The jury begins by ordering for a three week sanity test to determine if Jeffrey Dahmer was sane when he committed the acts.
In her book, The New Jim Crow, Alexander argues the discrimination of jury selections which is an unfair of treatment for people of color under the law (The Fourth Amendment). Moreover, she provides more information about the juries and juror race-based selection in the justice system. The statistical shows that there is approximately 30 percent of black man are automatically banned or rejected from the jury service and many cases all black jurors are eliminated with the irrational explanations, such as the physical appearance, clothing style, and even marital status (Alexander, 2012). She also reports the interesting case of the two black men who was convicted of second degree robbery in a Missouri court. In addition, she emphasizes that during
Once someone steps in the court room to oversee a trial of this caliber (or any caliber) they must not and will not let the media dictate their perspective of events. Scott Peterson’s jury saw the burden of proof provided by the prosecution and were left with no doubt in their minds by their own deductions he was guilty. The Casey Anthony jury on the other hand took all of the evidence into consideration, but they still were not completely convinced she was capable of the charges being filed against her, leaving them no other decision but to provide a not guilty
The jury system originated in England hundreds of years ago. The colonists brought the jury system from England to the United States. In 1733, John Zenger, a printer, printed a newspaper critical for the British Government. His attorney convinced the jury to be in favor for Zenger because his criticisms were true. After this trial, it gave ordinary citizens the freedom of speech and the power to go against the king.
This had a great impact on Tom Robinson's trial because he was seen as inferior to the jury, Bob Ewell, and his daughter, Mayella Ewell. The jury decided to take the words of the superior even though Tom was not guilty. The results of the trial were biased because of the unfair laws that even influenced the decisions of the jury during the
On April 15, 2013, in Boston, Massachusetts the Boston Marathon Bombing occurred during a marathon which was a very devastating day in the United States , there was also two bombs that went off close to the finish line. Also, the Marathon is always held during Patriots’ day to honor the war. The Boston Marathon Bombing injured around two hundred sixty-four people and the explosion of the bomb killed three civilians also, there were fourteen people who were amputated. The bombing had two suspects both who were brothers and later on in 2012 their family emigrated to the United States. The Boston Marathon Bombing was a huge event throughout the whole United States and maybe the whole world.
No matter how much the judicial system tries to weed out corruption and bias that will never change unless we dismantle the entirety of it. In addition the government will probably never tear down and rebuild because it would require a reexamination of the entire system. In which they would come to the conclusion that racism, anti-blackness, and the discrimination of all marginalized groups is embedded in every single part of American society and government. Since all of this hate and bigotry is seemingly everywhere in America it obviously affects jurors, so there is no way to completely guarantee that a jury is unbiased. Readers can see examples of this all throughout 12 Angry men.
The jury deliberation procedure in a homicide trial in New York City is examined in the film Twelve Angry Men. The film explores how prejudice, personal experiences, and emotion may obstruct the American judicial system and how compassion, reason, and logic can safeguard and defend due process. The ideas and or beliefs of prejudice , personal experience, and emotions not only have an impact on today's society but had an impact on a 1950’ s courtroom as well. First the theme of prejudice is very relevant as many of the jurors are more concerned about their personal lives than they are about giving this 16 year old boy a fair trial.
Something to Fight For “This gentleman chose to stand alone against us” (Rose 240). Juror Eight and Antigone chose the path of the unpopular opinion in the two works Twelve Angry Men and Antigone. These two morally based individuals feel they have a civil duty to uphold to the person whom they are defending. The jurors of Twelve Angry Men are faced with deciding the fate of a teenager who supposedly shot his father. Antigone, Haemon, and Creon are to choose with whom their loyalty resides--the State or the gods.
Twelve Angry Men is in many ways a love letter to the American legal justice system. We find here eleven men, swayed to conclusions by prejudices, past experience, and short-sightedness, challenged by one man who holds himself and his peers to a higher standard of justice, demanding that this marginalized member of society be given his due process. We see the jurors struggle between the two, seemingly conflicting, purposes of a jury, to punish the guilty and to protect the innocent. It proves, however, that the logic of the American trial-by-jury system does work.
In the play 12 Angry Men, a murder case is being reviewed by a jury. This jury must decide if a kid who killed his father is guilty or not. Two jurors that were on opposing sides for most of the play was Juror Eight and Juror Three. The reason they were on opposing sides was because Juror Three believed the kid was guilty, while Juror Eight believed there was not enough evidence to convict him. Most of the jurors wanted to settle on having reasonable doubt, so another jury could be called in.
Leadership and roles are depicted throughout the whole movie by many different jurors. The designated leader of the jury group was Juror #1. Juror #1 was when they first entered into the room but Juror #8 took the emergent role when he declined to agree with a guilty verdict. His rejection to agree in a guilty verdict was crucial since he voiced his uncertainty to the evidence at a early stage.
The justice system that relies on twelve individuals reaching a life-or-death decision has many complications and dangers. The play Twelve Angry Men, by Reiginald Rose, illustrates the dangers of a justice system that relies on twelve people reaching a life-or-death decision because people are biased, they think of a jury system as an inconvenience, and many people aren’t as intelligent as others. The first reason why Reiginald illustrates dangers is because people can be biased or they can stereotype the defendant. The Jurors in Twelve Angry Men relate to this because a few of them were biased and several of them stereotyped the defendant for being from the slums. The defendant in this play was a 19 year old kid from the slums.
These people are dangerous and don’t need big reason to kill someone.(This is an example of Prejudice too) Perception Discussion of elevated train (0:18:05) Could hear the argument (0:19:24) Discussion of lady's testimony (1:21:21) In all three situations Jurors organizes the information and translates it into something meaningful and comes to conclusion which results into making others to switch their vote from guilty to not guilty.. Representativeness heuristic "
In this paragraph, the advantages and disadvantages of trial by jury will be discussed. The main advantages are that juries introduce community values into the legal process and can influence the system (Joyce, 2013); they can achieve a sense of equity and fairness without enforcing unjust laws; in addition, juries are independent and neutral (Davies, 2015). Moreover, they guarantee participation from the public in a democratic institution (Hostettler, 2004), and represent the population thanks to the randomness with which jurors are decided (Davies, 2015). On the other hand, the most important disadvantages are that jurors have no prior contact with the courts, no training (Hostettler, 2004) and therefore they lack knowledge of law, courtroom proceedings (Joyce, 2013), and lack of ability to understand the legal directions (Thomas, 2010). Moreover, they must face evidence which is highly technical (Hostettler, 2004).