What’s the likelihood that those fancy Hollywood types that got Arnold elected are going to dig into their pockets next time around?
Listen, don’t get me wrong. I’m not forgetting about the victims, they need to be remembered and honored, just like the woman in the article says. But it doesn’t have to be one or the other – if you are against the death penalty that doesn’t mean you are pro senseless murder. You can protest the death penalty and still honor the victims. You can be against the death penalty and still be for people paying a price for their deeds.
On a related note, I am second chairing a case in Federal Court (drug case, go figure) and a guy came up during jury selection who looked totally norma,l and said he would execute all drug dealers, that this would be a really short trial if he were the judge and he would be able to solve two-thirds of the crime in the country. The judge told him he could get his things right away and leave.
Just another day in paradise.
Where you see your drug dealer client as a new pair of shoes, a new car, or just rent and groceries, that juror saw him and his ilk as the root of many of the problems facing this country. Your client is the example of and the cause of the deterioration of the moral fiber of our nation. How many people have died as a direct or indirect result of your client’s nefarious employment? How many children have been left to raise themselves because your client has continued to ply his trade? How can people ever hope to pull themselves from the downward cycle of despair and hopelessness when your client is standing directly in their path offering an hours worth of mindless solitude at $10-a-piece, which, when the hour has passed, will leave them even more desperate and hopeless? You don’t know how that juror has been personally affected by drugs. It could be the nephew who keeps getting arrested in other people’s houses, or the college roommate who keeps denying he’s stolen his cd’s, or it could be the mother he found lying in her own vomit when he was 10. Who knows?
Actually, if the potential juror was being honest, we know a lot about him, and none of the things you posited occurred.
I’m with you, notguilty. I was raised my whole life by a public defender step-father and his public defender friends and he taught me to respect everyone. Murderers and nobel prize winners alike. What you do for work keeps this country honest and makes it a place I want to live. So, thanks.
No joke, NotGuilty – it seems that anyone labeled “anonymous” is coming at you from all sides. But that’s fun though – I wish someone would argue with me. I like it.
You know, I think that anonymous post is missing something.
Namely the fact that lots of Americans know they can get out of jury duty by saying the kinds of things that potential juror did.
I’m betting the guy just didn’t want to sit in the courtroom and do his duty as a citizen, so he figured he’d toss out the most outrageous comments he could, figuring that at least one of the attorneys would refuse to have him on the jury…
I’m with circus – $10 says he just wanted to get out of jury duty. I think that if he really felt that strongly about putting drug dealers away, why wouldn’t he have kept his mouth shut so he could get on the jury and accomplish his goals? Or, are we assuming that the juror oath really forces jurors to be honest? (But the oath doesn’t force testifying defendants to be honest, of course.)