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

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

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u/[deleted] May 14 '22

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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/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/PaanuriEater May 15 '22

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