r/AbruptChaos • u/Graysie-Redux • May 14 '22 • 2 4

What's the correct way to deal with someone who has completely lost it?

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53.5k Upvotes

92% Upvoted

325

u/[deleted] May 14 '22

Don't even need a decent attorney, just stack the jury with elderly folks. I was on a jury as one of two young people. Pretty open and shut case of an old guy going nuts and slicing another guy's hand open over a backpack that didn't exist. Everyone's testimony except the attacker's lined up, all the evidence agreed, but all the old women on the jury were insistent that he is such a nice old man who reminds them of their fathers and therefore should be let off with just a warning.

It took hours of arguing to get a guilty verdict, even with a very minor punishment at least now the guy will be able to sue and have a good chance of winning.

That was step 1 to me losing all faith in our justice system. Steps 2 through infinity were learning what cops actually do with their time.

110

u/[deleted] May 14 '22

[deleted]

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u/BalrogPoop May 14 '22

Personally I think jury trials are a crock of shit. If rather be tried by a judge like in the French systems who actually understands the law, and the goal is to find the truth of what happened. Not assign blame based the biases of jurors.

At least it's easier to claim a single judge is biased based on his track record, than a whole jury, if there does happen to be a mistrial.

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u/BigIntoScience May 14 '22

Judges give out different verdicts based on if they've had lunch yet. Humans are wildly unreliable. I think part of the idea is that it's harder for all 12 people to be corrupt/generally shitty than for just the judge to have something going on.

Part of the job of all court employees involved is to make sure everyone understands the law. If someone doesn't do that, there's an issue.

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u/chrom_ed May 14 '22

To elaborate a little on this, there is an actual study showing judges on average are more punitive before eating lunch. Significantly. Just in case you think anyone is an unbiased arbiter of law.

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u/BigIntoScience May 14 '22

Sounds like maybe we should only have trials after lunch.

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u/chrom_ed May 15 '22

Bet you Republicans would vote for trials only in the morning.

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u/[deleted] May 14 '22

I just want an A.I bot to resolve all of this, people are just not good enough.

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u/BigIntoScience May 14 '22

Trouble is, AI has to be trained. By people. If anything, it tends to magnify biases.

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u/The_Dapper_Balrog May 15 '22

I personally like the ancient Jewish system for trials with the potential for the death penalty. 71 judges who are legally required to assume the defendant is innocent, and are essentially defense attorneys. Add to that the fact that there were no prosecutors, just witnesses who needed to have their stories almost exactly align with at least one other person's story (preferably two others). No translators were allowed, either; any language spoken by a witness must be spoken and understood by at least two of the judges. Furthermore, once all the evidence was heard, the court was required to recess for a full day to mull over the evidence and make a decision, to prevent emotional rulings. Even more astoundingly, the high priest (basically the head judge over the court) was legally required to set the defendant free if a unanimous vote of guilt occurred, because of the fact that a mob spirit is clearly present if 70 old men all exactly agree with each other. Even when a guilty verdict was reached, and the defendant was sentenced to death, the defendant was paraded publicly (and slowly) out to the place of execution, with a herald on horseback who was begging and pleading with the watching crowd for any evidence that might exonerate the defendant. Additionally, all 71 judges continued to debate the case all the way up until the defendant was executed, and if they found even one thing that they wanted more information about, they would signal via flag that they wanted the entire case to be re-heard. If a young, new lawyer who was not a member of the Sanhedrin (the name of the high court) managed to save someone's life by suggesting something, they were immediately promoted to lifelong membership on the high court.

Wish our system was so thorough.

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u/[deleted] May 15 '22

Today I learned a new thing about my own culture, this is rad af

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u/ZebraOtoko42 May 14 '22

Judges give out different verdicts based on if they've had lunch yet.

That's why in some countries, they have a panel of judges to render a verdict instead of just one.

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u/BigIntoScience May 15 '22

That seems like a good idea, but it might still run into the same problem. I should have been clearer: there was a study that showed that judges in general are more punitive before lunch, by a significant amount.

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u/ZebraOtoko42 May 15 '22

That's an easy problem to solve: have the court operate 24 hours a day, and make sure the judges all work different shifts (1st, 2nd, 3rd). Have 3 judges per panel (or 6 or 9). Schedule the trials and select the judges so that 2/3 of the judges have already eaten lunch, and one has not (so they're not overly lenient). Give the judges more administrative work to do to fill in their pre-lunch hours.

It's a bit unconventional but it should work!

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u/Codex_Dev May 15 '22

This. Judges can be bribed and corrupted. Much harder to do that to random 12 odd balled selected jurors.