Saturday, April 24, 2004
Erica has some interesting things to say about jury duty, and about the process of being a responsible juror over at Designs on You:
"I myself, got to thinking about Socrates (b/c well, I'm apparently a dork.) Socrates gets brought up on charges that will lead to him having to drink hemlock. His students are telling him "We can fight this, you can't do this." His response was that you have to abide by the laws of a society, otherwise it's chaos and anarchy and no structure. You can only go by what the law says and what is presented to you as evidence, though so many "Well what if..." and "But maybe she didn't have assistance in maintaining her condition" thoughts may come into play. And that's a really hard thing b/c on the whole, you want to think people are inherently good (or I do anyway.) But in the end, this woman ran around and unplugged phones. She wouldn't let the victim leave. She verbally threatened her when she tried. She didn't take responsibility for herself, to take her meds if that was the case, and that led to her acting in ways that go against legal precedent. And in our society, if you do actions with knowledge that they will cause bodily harm (assault with a deadly weapon) or imply you will cause bodily harm (threats followed up with bodily harm), you have to pay a price. You can't just run around doing whatever you want b/c you feel like it. So we had to find her guilty. But it was really hard, I tell you what. I actually got emotional when we were reading out the verdicts, had we done the right thing?
"But each one of us went out praying that girl gets some real help, I know that much."
Where can I get some jurors who think about Socrates?
"I myself, got to thinking about Socrates (b/c well, I'm apparently a dork.) Socrates gets brought up on charges that will lead to him having to drink hemlock. His students are telling him "We can fight this, you can't do this." His response was that you have to abide by the laws of a society, otherwise it's chaos and anarchy and no structure. You can only go by what the law says and what is presented to you as evidence, though so many "Well what if..." and "But maybe she didn't have assistance in maintaining her condition" thoughts may come into play. And that's a really hard thing b/c on the whole, you want to think people are inherently good (or I do anyway.) But in the end, this woman ran around and unplugged phones. She wouldn't let the victim leave. She verbally threatened her when she tried. She didn't take responsibility for herself, to take her meds if that was the case, and that led to her acting in ways that go against legal precedent. And in our society, if you do actions with knowledge that they will cause bodily harm (assault with a deadly weapon) or imply you will cause bodily harm (threats followed up with bodily harm), you have to pay a price. You can't just run around doing whatever you want b/c you feel like it. So we had to find her guilty. But it was really hard, I tell you what. I actually got emotional when we were reading out the verdicts, had we done the right thing?
"But each one of us went out praying that girl gets some real help, I know that much."
Where can I get some jurors who think about Socrates?
// posted by Bill @ 1:16 PM 
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