- “Expensive new licensing requirements and the bureaucratic headache of implementing” new regulations are expected to reduce further the number of agencies offering international adoption to U.S. families [Liz Wolfe, Reason] And don’t forget to mark your calendar and, if you can attend in person, register for next week’s July 19 Cato conference on adoption policy, at which international adoption will be one focus;
- Report confirms again what I wrote nearly a year ago: many persons are being held in jail longer under Maryland’s ill-thought-out venture in restricting cash bail [Lynh Bui, Washington Post, my WSJ piece last September, more]
- Online data protection episode is just latest instance of how California initiative process can put disturbing leverage in private hands [Cathy Gellis, TechDirt]
- “The cans now read ‘NON-TRADEMARK INFRINGEMENT ALMA MATER IPA’ with no other Pitt-related images.” [Grant Burgman, Pitt News on campus beer trademark controversy]
- “Pregnancy discrimination? Don’t rely on government for additional protection” [Vanessa Brown Calder, Cato]
- If you’re looking to dodge voir dire scrutiny: “How To Get On a Jury” [Mark Bennett, Reason]
Posts Tagged ‘jury selection’
February 1 roundup
- “She Asked for Help for Postpartum Depression. The Nurse Called the Cops.” [Darby Saxbe, Slate] Under one Montana prosecutor’s announced policy, pregnant mother “proven to be using alcohol … might be monitored by law enforcement or sent to jail.” [Andrew Turck, Big Horn County News]
- “The Florida Supreme Court has agreed to decide whether a judge may be Facebook friends with lawyers who appear before the judge.” [Raymond McKoski, Orlando Sentinel]
- Nation’s highest military court unanimously tosses sexual assault conviction of Coast Guard enlisted man, finding juror selection stacked by higher-ups; of seven jurors, four were trained sexual assault victim advocates [Rowan Scarborough, Washington Times; decision]
- Report on legal landscape of cottage food industry [Jennifer McDonald, Institute for Justice] Deregulation efforts of Trump administration have yet to reach food sector [Baylen Linnekin]
- So large and so diverse is the 400-member lower house of the New Hampshire legislature that it appears to contain a sovereign citizen believer [Jack Smith IV, Mic]
- “Stash House Stings: When the Government Can Invent Crimes and Criminals” [Trevor Burrus and Reilly Stephens]
“And he disrespected the Wu-Tang Clan.”
Highlights from the jury selection process in the Martin Shkreli case. “More than two hundred potential jurors were excused from the trial.” [Harper’s]
“What if we abolished peremptory challenges?”
Rare to see Linda Greenhouse and me on the same page [New York Times, earlier] A contrasting view: Scott Greenfield.
“How jury duty almost turned me into an anarchist”
Matt Welch’s experience being called for a civil jury [Reason] I, and this site, get a mention; I’ve had multiple reports of people bringing my books with them to the courthouse so as not to be picked for a jury. And I wrote for Reason about the jury selection process a while back.
More: In a followup post, Welch quotes passages from my 2003 article and confirms that, alas, the same practices are going on today, at least in New York City: the rigorous exclusion of jurors with any expertise or familiarity with difficult technical issues, and independent-minded people likely to be “thought leaders”; the avid efforts to plant preconceptions about the facts and issues of the case and extract individual “promises” of favorable votes, with no judge present; and so forth. There were hopes the round of reforms introduced by then-Chief Judge Judith Kaye some years back would clean up New York’s awful voir dire (jury selection) process, but clearly it hasn’t. Much less nonsense tends to go on in jury selection if the judge is present, and a key to the awfulness of New York voir dire — and its empowerment of lawyers — is the judge’s absence. Plus: Ilya Somin weighs in.
“Abolish the peremptory challenge”
It’s not a new idea for reform — I suggested it as my contribution to a book fifteen years ago, it had been kicked around for decades already at that point, England has done it, and we’ve discussed it here. But the route of making progress, as befits our age of anti-discrimination, has been the piecemeal extension of so-called Batson challenges in which it is argued that lawyers used their peremptories to exclude a protected demographic group. The editorialists of the L.A. Times discuss the latest, a Ninth Circuit ruling extending the list of forbidden categories to include sexual orientation.
“Newspapers are used in the parrot’s cage.”
Jury selection, or de-selection, begins in the George Zimmerman-Trayvon Martin murder trial. The quote above comes from potential juror B37, regarding her consumption of newspapers. [Washington Post; my two cents a while back on jury selection]
Great moments in jury service
A man who showed up at court in Springfield, Mass. to deal with a traffic ticket mistakenly wound up on a jury. The jury proceeded to hear the evidence and closing statements and convict the defendant; the judge declared a mistrial after it emerged that the man, who spoke limited English, had gotten on to the panel by accident. [MassLive]
February 24 roundup
- Melissa Kite, columnist with Britain’s Spectator, writes about her low-speed car crash and its aftermath [first, second, third, fourth]
- NYT’s Nocera lauds Keystone pipeline, gets called “global warming denier” [NYTimes] More about foundations’ campaign to throttle Alberta tar sands [Coyote] Regulations mandating insurance “disclosures” provide another way for climate change activists to stir the pot [Insurance and Technology]
- “Cop spends weeks to trick an 18-year-old into possession and sale of a gram of pot” [Frauenfelder, BB]
- Federal Circuit model order, pilot program could show way to rein in patent e-discovery [Inside Counsel, Corporate Counsel] December Congressional hearing on discovery costs [Lawyers for Civil Justice]
- Trial lawyer group working with Senate campaigns in North Dakota, Nevada, Wisconsin, Hawaii [Rob Port via LNL] President of Houston Trial Lawyers Association makes U.S. Senate bid [Chron]
- Panel selection: “Jury strikes matter” [Ron Miller, Maryland Injury]
- Law-world summaries/Seventeen syllables long/@legal_haiku (& for a similar treatment of high court cases, check out @SupremeHaiku)
Update: Branham v. Ford
In May 2001, Cheryl Jane Hale was driving four children to a sleepover in her 1987 Ford Bronco. She didn’t bother to have the children wear their seat belts, so, when she took her eyes off the road to argue with the backseat passengers, and thus drove off the road and flipped the car, 12-year-old Jesse Branham was thrown from the car and suffered brain damage. A jury in Hampton County, South Carolina (the second jury to be impaneled—the first one was dismissed in a mistrial when it was discovered after two weeks of trial that five of the jurors were former clients of Branham’s lawyers) decided that this was only 45% Hale’s fault, held Ford 55% responsible, which puts Ford entirely on the hook for $31 million in damages.
On Monday, the South Carolina Supreme Court reversed because of prejudicial closing arguments that relied heavily on inadmissible evidence. More importantly for lawyers practicing in South Carolina, the Court adopted “the risk-utility test with its requirement of showing a feasible alternative design.”
How bad of a judicial hellhole is Hampton County? Though Hale was a co-defendant, she cooperated with the plaintiffs throughout the trial in their case against Ford, even sitting at the plaintiffs’ table; but because the judge classified Hale as a co-defendant, it meant that Hale got half of the peremptory challenges of the “defense.” More from Comer; no press coverage that I’ve seen yet. (cross-posted from Point of Law)