Comment by Zigurd
1 day ago
Have you ever sat on a jury in a criminal case? A frighteningly high percentage of people will swallow every lie a cop tells, even when thoroughly discredited in cross-examination. There's no shortage of people to guard the concentration camps.
I've been on a grand jury... the cops lied through their teeth, couldn't keep their stories straight through a prepared monologues reading from notes and ... everyone in the room picked up on it and didn't indict the suspects. Our grand jury was so cynical the DAs stopped giving us cases and made the other two grand juries stay late to make up for the lost capacity. It was great. We did something good. And it was just a bunch of random people from Brooklyn.
The establishment likes to pat the establishment on the back but ordinary people seem to know what's up. In my minimal experience, anyway.
(One thing to keep in mind... grand juries really are a cross-section of the population, whereas lawyers get to select jurors after talking to them, so there is some selection bias on ordinary juries that grand juries don't have.)
I was on a jury a few years ago. The defendent was a homeless person with mental health issues. The cop was obviously lying about the one thing that was the core element of the crime. It was like a child telling the truth about every element of the indoor soccer game expect the part where they were the one who kicked the ball.
The jury was me, (white) nine other white people, and two brown people. Me and the brown people thought the cop was obviously lying, and was therefore not guilty. The nine other people thought he was guilty.
Like the cop was obviously fucking lying.
After three days of deliberation we declared a hung jury.
I was speaking with the prosecutor afterwards and he mentioned they were going for the felony version of the crime instead of the misdemeanor (he was obviously guilty of the misdemeanor, the felony depended on the element the cop was lying about) because the dude was a bad dude and they needed to get him.
I looked him up when I got home. (I didn't look him up during the trial, they expressly forbid you from doing that) He had done something bad and went to prison for four years. He did his time and got out. They were still trying to throw the book at him for bullshit.
I looked him up recently. He was never convicted of anything ever again, but died in jail two years after we declared a hung jury. Prosecutor got what he wanted in the end, I suppose.
> I looked him up when I got home. (I didn't look him up during the trial, they expressly forbid you from doing that)
Why is complying with that rule more sensible than believing the cop because he's a cop?
Because it is a well documented source of bias.
You don't even need to leave your basement, or even this website to see this in action. A frightening number of people are totally subservient to the government and place blind faith in politicians and their paid-for "experts" and bureaucrats and regulators.
What does this have to do with what he just said?
That most people have a simplistic, naive, and child-like perspective of the world. One based on just-desserts, on causality, on fairness.
You see, there are good people and bad people. Giving the good people more tools is always good, because they're good people. If you're a good person, you need not worry either. Bad things don't happen to good people.
Cops are good guys, criminals are bad guys. The government fighting criminals is good. If you get caught up in it - well, that's fine right? Because you're a good guy, too. So that's good for you. And, if something bad DOES happen to you... well then you were never a good guy. Obviously, because bad things happen to bad people.
We see this in so many things. Well, rich people MUST be hardworking and moral, right? Because good things have happened to them, so they must be good. Well, the janitor must be lazy or stupid right? Because their job is bad, so they must be bad. Well, the cops raiding my house must be good thing right? Because I'm good!
If there's one thing I have learned from life, it's that life is not fair. Children starve, innocents get murdered, the evil can thrive, and happiness isn't doled out to who deserves it. It's never about who deserved what or what is right. It's about systems, structure, and incentives.
He didn't say any of these things.
If you have to make a caricature of his arguments to so much as address them, what does that say about the strength of your own argument?
We don't have a jury system in my country for the same reason we don't grab randos off the street to operate nuclear reactors.
Being a judge is an actual job that requires training and experience.
Ofcourse it makes court cases a lot more boring if you are dealing with someone who knows what they are doing.