Welcome to Douglas Wilson's Blog and May Blog, presented by Canon Press.

The Rights of Juries Monday, May 2, 2022.

Introduction

A number of years ago, I had the privilege of serving as the foreman of a jury in a murder

trial.

That experience was in varying degrees, inspiring, exasperating, and surreal.

At all the corruptions that have crept into our system, and there are many, the system

is still operational.

It's still functions.

But it could function a lot more effectively if the people generally knew about the rights

of juries.

An informed populace means informed jury pools, and informed jury pools means informed

juries.

Incidentally, you might want to neglect to inform the judge about the fact that you have

been, quote unquote, informed, which you will be shortly provided you keep reading.

And legal professionals don't like informed juries.

The surreal part

While we were cooling our heels in the jury pool, we were shown an inspirational video

about the important role of juries in our legal system, and in a portion of that video,

we were told the juries had performed a valiant service in our fight for independence

from Great Britain in the war for independence.

The sentiment they were trying to elicit in that part was yay for juries.

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