Deliberation
The Definition says:
2: deliberations Discussion and consideration of all sides of an issue: the deliberations of a jury.
The jury I was on broke for deliberation at 11:30 on thursday--half an hour before lunch. We all wanted to go home. We spent 15 minutes choosing a foreperson and then we began deliberating. I started out in the deliberation room (they even refer to the room as a place where you consider all sides of the issue) by putting some base assumptions about the case up on the white board. I put up the amounts desired by both parties, and the one fact we all agreed on. Within moments everyone quickly determined there were some facts that were not relevant to the case, and on this we all agreed. Then one person said we should just vote now to see if at least nine of us agreed on an amount, as that was the only requirement of that jury. The rationale of course was to get done with jury duty. On the go-round where we had to either agree or disagree, it got to me and I said that I could not agree at this stage because we hadn't even discussed the evidence, and I believed there was at least one vital question that we should deliberate over: it was the central question to the case.
The count was nine, we went back and delivered our verdict and went to lunch.
I feel that those two people involved in the case were counting on us to actually review the evidence and deliberate. Stupid assumption, I guess. In retrospect I could have gone either way on the case, and still feel that way because we didn't go over the evidence. In the end, like most things, justice depends on mood and luck and the almighty American knee-jerk response. Jury of your peers? Ha. Jury of People Who Could Care Less.
2: deliberations Discussion and consideration of all sides of an issue: the deliberations of a jury.
The jury I was on broke for deliberation at 11:30 on thursday--half an hour before lunch. We all wanted to go home. We spent 15 minutes choosing a foreperson and then we began deliberating. I started out in the deliberation room (they even refer to the room as a place where you consider all sides of the issue) by putting some base assumptions about the case up on the white board. I put up the amounts desired by both parties, and the one fact we all agreed on. Within moments everyone quickly determined there were some facts that were not relevant to the case, and on this we all agreed. Then one person said we should just vote now to see if at least nine of us agreed on an amount, as that was the only requirement of that jury. The rationale of course was to get done with jury duty. On the go-round where we had to either agree or disagree, it got to me and I said that I could not agree at this stage because we hadn't even discussed the evidence, and I believed there was at least one vital question that we should deliberate over: it was the central question to the case.
The count was nine, we went back and delivered our verdict and went to lunch.
I feel that those two people involved in the case were counting on us to actually review the evidence and deliberate. Stupid assumption, I guess. In retrospect I could have gone either way on the case, and still feel that way because we didn't go over the evidence. In the end, like most things, justice depends on mood and luck and the almighty American knee-jerk response. Jury of your peers? Ha. Jury of People Who Could Care Less.
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