(3089/898) Juries - part 2

558) Don't do the crime if you can't do the time.

Davie Grusin and M. Ames
"Keep Your Eye On The Sparrow" (song, 1975)
sung by Sammy Davis Jr.
theme song for Baretta (TV program, 1975)
created by Stephen J. Cannell
starring Robert Blake

559) It is interesting to compare [William] Penn's defense [in 1670, of charges of unlawful assemble and breach of the peace] with that of Operation Rescue defendants in their antiabortion trials [for 1989 trespassing charges in San Diego]. [...] Penn was asking jurors to pardon his civil disobedience, just as Operation Rescue defendants asked their juror to excuse their disobedience of trespass laws. Still, there is a difference. Penn never asked his jurors to acquit him because they happened to agree with [his] Quaker doctrine. What jurors thought of Quaker theology was irrelevant to the principle of justice for which Penn was willing to break the law. That principle was that persons gathered with an intent to worship God in peace could never be guilty of unlawful assembly. Any law of England, or any judicial interpretation of English law, that provided otherwise was inherently unjust and should never have been enforced by any jury against any religious group. Penn's dispute with the law, therefore, was not narrowly self-serving. He sought to change the law equally and for all [...]

The Operation Rescue argument cannot be similarly generalized. The defendants never disputed the justice of the law of trespass under which they were tried. Presumably, they were content to have other juries convict other defendants for a concededly just law. Their appeals to their jurors' conscience was really a narrowly partisan or political pitch: jurors should refuse to enforce a just law against antiabortion defendants because the jurors happened to agree with the politics that motivated the lawbreaking. There was nothing in the Operation Rescue argument about jury nullification that welcomed discretion in juries to refuse to enforce trespass laws against proabortion demonstrators. In the end, the antiabortion protesters pleaded to be exempt from a law that they themselves considered just and that they presumably wanted to remain on the books without change.

Jeffrey Abramson
We, The Jury (1994)

560) While acknowledging the dangers of jury nullification, I believe it is necessary to instruct jurors that, as the conscience of the community, they may set aside the law to acquit a defendant. I say this because history indicates that we cannot eliminate jury nullification - we can only drive it underground. My preference is for a jury that does things above board and is fully appraised of its choices. [...] I am aware that restoring [...] jury nullification runs the risk of unleashing bias in jurors, but this is a risk we must take if we are to preserve the jury as a forum where ordinary persons gain the power to reconcile law and justice in concrete cases.

Jeffrey Abramson
We, The Jury (1994)

561) Of all the reforms suggested [...] the most difficult to achieve will be a reversal of jury selection trends that disqualify persons for overexposure to pretrial publicity. These trends have been building for nearly two centuries, as stricter definitions of impartiality have made ignorance a virtue and knowledge a vice in would-be jurors.

Jeffrey Abramson
We, The Jury (1994)

562) An ideal of jury impartiality that can be practiced only by disqualifying the most well-informed members of the community does not inspire confidence in the accuracy of jury verdicts. It naively defines an impartial mind as an empty mind.

Jeffrey Abramson
We, The Jury (1994)

563) A jury is twelve men and women chosen to select which party has the better lawyer.

Robert Frost (attributed)
[ALQ]

[Note: The Yale Book of Quotations gives the first attribution to Frost being from Evan Esar, The Dictionary of Humorous Quotations (1949), but says the quote also appears without attribution in John Garland Pollard, A Connotary (1933). [YQ]

See also #831 Crosby/Mencken. For more on juries and the jury system, see "Juries - Part 1" and "Juries - Part 3 (OJ)", #552-557 and #1368-1377.]

Sources

[ALQ] - The Oxford Dictionary of American Legal Quotations (1993)
[YQ] - The Yale Book of Quotations (2006)


Note: "3089/898" is the designation I've given to the project of posting all my collected quotes, excerpts and ideas (3089 of them) in the remaining days of the Bush administration (of which there were 898 left when I began).

As of today, there are 709 days remaining in the administration of the worst American President ever.