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by cones688
4907 days ago
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So its the prosecutors job to decide what evidence is "questionable"? Words fail me. It is the job of the jury to test the evidence. The prosecutor puts forward his/her case with the laws which were broken and evidence that they think might prove they were. In the UK we have Drunk Driving and Drug Driving as separate offences, so what happens when I crash my car and test positive for weed and booze (we have chemical tests for both - unlike America's strange obsession with an officers judgement), they both carry the same sentence, does the prosecutor just throw out one of them at random as they are similar but overlap? "But psychologically, if the jury see that a person has been charged" that is a whole different discussion on the suitability of jury as a method of trial, for a case to get in front of a jury it must have some merits which can't be ignored. Also as a sidenote, you don't think people would form an opinion if they had already seen some guy "walk free" from an earlier trial, then ended up sitting on the jury for a similar but not trial, the jury would have their first case facts from the media which is even worse idea. |
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The jury is not informed of the statue(s) the defendant is being charged with having violated except the most petty one for each category that the state is charging them with. For each applicable "petty" charge the jury finds the defendant guilty of then and only then is the jury then asked and tasked with determining if the defendant violated the next offense. So we still have one trial for numerous charges but the jury is focused on only one at a time and working on them in an escalating order.
I have this feeling that juries tend to start at the top most severe charge and whittle themselves done and if enough charges were made they may psychologically believe the defendant must be guilty of something. Working from the bottom up that pressure and psychology would be absent from the jury.
So the jury is informed the State believes a man is guilty of 1st degree murder and burglary. Judge tasks the jury with determining if the man broke into someones home, if yes, then the man took something of $xxx in value which determines the level of the burglary charge for sentencing purpuses. Next the judges asks about the killing charges, starting with manslaughter. Jury believes that defendant did in fact unlawfully kill another man. Then judge instructs them to determine if defendant premeditated the murder, etc... on up from manslaughter to 3rd degree homicide, 2nd degree homicide, first degree...
I realize that some laws may need to be rewritten to make this progressive application work.
EDIT: What I'm trying to say or do is: Don't provide biasing information ahead of time. Just like when doing software estimates you don't want a manager going to the dev team saying: hey we NEED these features can you give us an estimate, and oh we need it by the end of the month.