The jury system in inefficient because it relies on compulsory civil service that most people wish to avoid. Since long deliberations add to the length of jury service, jurors serving compulsory terms have a natural incentive to reach a verdict as soon as possible, which often influences the decision of minority opinion holders to join the majority irrespective of their beliefs and wholly apart from the separate issue of social pressure and coercion by dominant group members during deliberations.
The often-repeated phrase that "juries are composed of the only people who are too stupid to get out of jury duty" may be an exaggeration, but there is some truth to it, simply because people with greater knowledge and awareness of laws and government administration do tend to justify excusals from jury service more often than those with less sophisticated understanding and awareness of governmental procedures and laws.
The juror system is greatly…...
The constitutionality of the need for a unanimous jury verdict has been determined by the U.S. Supreme Court and the Court has ruled that, in state cases, such verdicts are constitutionally acceptable (Coughlan, 2000). The Court ruled that justice could still be served with less than a unanimous jury verdict as long as the jury was composed of a group of individuals representative of a cross section of the community who have been free to deliberate and to do so free from outside intimidation.
In my opinion, the Supreme Court's decision in Apodaca v. Oregon (Apodaca v. Oregon, 1972) was decided with an eye toward expediency than justice. The logic behind the unanimous verdict is based on the sanctity of reasonable doubt and protecting the innocent and should be a sacred element of our judicial system. The decision in Apodaca was a compromise that violates our system's principles.
Mistrial/New Trial
A trial…...
mlaReferences
Apodaca v. Oregon, 406 U.S. 404 (U.S. Supreme Court 1972).
Coughlan, P.J. (2000). In Defense of Unanmous Jury Verdicts: Mistrials, Communication, and Strategic Voting. The American Political Science Review, 375-393.
Tiersma, P. (2001). The Rocky Road to Legal Reform: Improving the Language of Jury Instructions. Brooklyn Law Review, 1081-1091.
Judicial Process
nstead, intent can be shown in one of three ways: facial discrimination, discriminatory application or discriminatory motive. Facial discrimination is simply that the law is discriminatory on its face as it makes explicit distinctions between classes of persons. Discriminatory application occurs where the law is neutral on its face but is applied in a different manner to different classes of persons.
f a person can show that government officials applying the law have a discriminatory purpose, the law will be invalidated. Discriminatory motive occurs when the law is neutral on its face and in its application but will have a disproportionate impact on a particular class of persons. Although statistical studies alone are not enough to prove discriminatory motive, when combined with other evidence it can suffice. McCleskey v. Kemp, 481 U.S. 279 (1987).
n the case at hand, the argument should focus on both discriminatory application and discriminatory motive. As…...
mlaIf a person can show that government officials applying the law have a discriminatory purpose, the law will be invalidated. Discriminatory motive occurs when the law is neutral on its face and in its application but will have a disproportionate impact on a particular class of persons. Although statistical studies alone are not enough to prove discriminatory motive, when combined with other evidence it can suffice. McCleskey v. Kemp, 481 U.S. 279 (1987).
In the case at hand, the argument should focus on both discriminatory application and discriminatory motive. As to discriminatory motive, the Supreme Court is correct in holding that statistical evidence alone is not enough to show discriminatory motive. However, if the Defendant provided other, non-statistical evidence to supplement this statistical evidence, then the Supreme Court's ruling is incorrect.
Further, the Supreme Court erred in failing to rule on the case as a discriminatory application case. Here, the capital punishment law itself is neutral on its face. However, its application clearly has a discriminatory effect. The application of a law to a particular class of individuals can be shown by statistical evidence. The Supreme Court's decision that statistical evidence plays no role in proving application of a law is unreasonable and ungrounded as there is no other method to show unequal application.
Wright to snap and take violent action. The sequence of events does not point to murder. The most she can be guilty of is "voluntary manslaughter" not murder. Recommendation: A suspended sentence.
Breaking the Law in Order to Do "Right"
Sometimes, it is difficult to know what to do in a certain situation. The law may say one thing, but circumstances make what is legal wrong from a moral point-of-view. I have never been personally faced with making a decision to do something illegal, but a close friend of my cousin did about three years ago. His mother had terminal cancer. She had had chemotherapy, but it didn't stop the tumor from metastasis. She was suffering horribly. I only visited her once with my cousin. Her tumor was huge and oozing at that time. I couldn't stand seeing her that way, and the smell was awful, like rotting flesh. Anyhow, she…...
jury system currently in the United States in terms of fairness and justice.
In the world of excellence and valid legality, the legal system would donate a genuine and wide procedure via which a defendant's inherent and conscious deliberation towards crime in the breaching of criminal laws would be pinpointed in an impartial way. Anyhow, theoretical proof provides suggestion that this genuine and impartial pattern of working is non-reaping. The U.S. legal system has been in a tumult of peaking censure currently. Any criminal legal pattern is an instrument society applies to implement the patterns of behavior required to save people and the community. It functions by intercepting, punishing, accusing, and putting to trial those individuals of the community who breach the basic guidelines of group life. The perpetration against law breaching individuals is patterned to be servile to three reasons beyond the urgent disciplinary one. It curtails intimidating individuals…...
mlaReferences
Baldassare, Mark. Regional Variations in Support of Regional Governance. Urban affairs Quarterly, Dec. 1994, pp. 45-51
Fulton, William; Glickfeld, Madelyn; McMurran, Grant and Gin, June. "A Landscape Potrait of Southern California's structure of Government and Growth." Retrieved at Accessed on 12/11/2003http://www.cp-dr.com/landscape_port/landport.html .
The Way We Elect Our Presidents." The Phyllis Schlafly Report. Volume 34, No.5, December, 2000, pp.24-28
Wayne, Stephen J. "The Multiple Influences on U.S. Foreign Policy-Making" U.S. Foreign Policy Agenda, March 2000, pp.11-16
The women recognize they have let Mrs. Wright down by not visiting her or supporting her, and so, they do the right thing by hiding the evidence and "saving" Mrs. Wright. The governor recognizes he will be remembered only as the puppet of Francis, and so signs the contracts in his final act as governor to do the right thing and allow the new governor an equal chance to prove himself. The senator does the right thing and calls for another vote because he knows Alfred deserves a chance to live a real life and gain trust in the goodness of people. Each of these characters understands what they need to do, and do it, even though it may have ongoing ramifications for them. Therefore, the common theme is goodness in the hearts of people, even if there is evil all around them.
Glaspell's work seems to connect this theme…...
mlaReferences
Glaspell, Susan. "A Jury of Her Peers." Learner.org. 2005. 26 April 2007. http://www.learner.org/exhibits/literature/story/fulltext.html
Glaspell, Susan. "The Plea" "The Last Sixty Minutes." Gutenberg.org. 2005. 26 April 2007. http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext05/masks10.txt
Jury of Her Peers" is the place of women in society and especially the isolation this results in. We see this through the character, Minnie Foster and her isolation from love, happiness, companionship and from society as a whole. Not only does the story describe this isolation but it allows the reader to feel the impact of this isolation and recognize the tragedy of the situation.
The story is set in a rural community in turn-of -- the century Iowa. This time-frame is one where women did not have the freedom they have today, but were instead seen as wives, cooks and housekeepers. This is the basis for Minnie's isolation, her place in the society of the day. This is also compounded by Minnie's husband, John Wright, who makes her more isolated than many other women of the time. We see that Minnie is isolated from love. Her husband is…...
Wright.
It is also quite clear the men do not think the women are intelligent enough to know a clue if they saw it. Glaspell writes, "But would the women know a clue if they did come upon it?' he said; and, having delivered himself of this, he followed the others through the stair door" (Glaspell). Clearly, if they did share the evidence they find with the men, they would simply laugh it off and discount it. They do not respect the women or their intuition, and so, they would simply ignore or discount the evidence if the women gave it to them. The men think they are superior to the women, but in this story, the women prove they have much more common sense and intuitiveness than the men do. They understand the inner workings of the female mind, and what would drive a woman to murder her husband.…...
mlaReferences
Glaspell, Susan. "A Jury of Her Peers." Learner.org. 2007. 29 Jan. 2007. http://www.learner.org/exhibits/literature/story/fulltext.html
Another difference between the American juror system and the Venuzuela escabino system is the number of participants. In the American juror system there are 12 jurors seated with several alternatives on the ready. This means if one of the chosen jurors cannot serve completely through to the end then one of the alternatives will step in and take that jurors place. As an alternative the juror is expected to listen as attentively as if he or she were an actual juror and not an alternate. This way, if the alternate has to step in then he or she is already apprised of the same evidence and testimony that the regular jury has received thus far.
The escabino system and the jury system have a commonality when it comes to confidentiality. Both system instruct the participants to not discuss the cases that they are hearing outside of the courtroom or jury deliberation…...
mlaWorks Cited
Jury Reform
http://www.constitution.org/jury/jury.htm
Frequently Asked Questions for the Jury Commission
Today we do not have the reassurance that injustice as a result of jury nullifications are behind us. acism is still a prevalent issue in our society and it is concentrated at times within communities, making it possible to have a majority within the jury carrying prejudices into the courtroom. Shamefully our courts have had to let rapists walk because "Juries have acquitted & #8230; after concluding that the victims deserved to be raped because of the way they dressed or acted" (King, 1999, p. 4). It is evident that "jurors are not in any better position than judges or prosecutors to decide which defendants should be exempted from a law's reach" (King, 1999, p. 5).
Because juries are comprised of people who may or may not be familiar with the details of the law - and are largely not lawmakers themselves - we run the risk of nullifications being haphazardly…...
mlaReferences
Conrad, C.S., & King, N. (1999, May 24). Symposim. Insight on the News. Retrieved from http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1571/is_19_15/ai_54736559/?tag=content;col1
Dwyer, W. 2014. In the hands of the people: The trial jury’s origins, triumphs, troubles, and future in American democracy. New York, NY: Thomas Dunne Books. In this book, Dwyer makes the case that juries are just as fundamental and necessary an institution to democracy as voting itself. Dwyer acknowledges that the greater complexity of court cases today have generated calls in some quarters for juries to be eliminated. High-profile acquittals of celebrities have similarly shaken faith in the jury system. Dwyer attempts to show why such incidents have occurred while still demonstrating that the Founding Fathers viewed jury trials as vital to American democracy. He begins with a history of how trials were decided throughout history, including the trial-by-ordeal of the Middle Ages to the jury system today. The jury has become more democratic than ever before—for many centuries, juries were solely made up of males—and this may be another…...
The Understanding of Women in TriflesIn Susan Glaspell's play "Trifles," the women, Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters, seem to understand each other with ease despite not discussing the circumstances of the case directly. The story is a powerful commentary on gender roles and the isolation of women in rural communities. There is evidence of foreshadowing in the story that hints at why the wives might be sympathetic to Minnie Wright and what experiences in their own lives would help them relate.Minnie Wright, a victim of spousal abuse in the play, has been isolated and oppressed by her husband. Through subtle details in the play, such as the lack of basic necessities in her home and her sewing materials, the audience is able to grasp the depth of Minnie's loneliness and isolation. Along with the bird, these clues indicate that Minnie is likely experiencing abuse from her husband, a fact that…...
mlaWorks Cited
Guswanto, Doni, and Lailatul Husna. \\\\\\"Psychological Conflict Between Men and Women in
Susan Glaspell’s Trifles.\\\\\\" Jurnal Ilmiah Langue and Parole 2.2 (2019): 26-35.
Jawad, Enas Jaafar. \\\\\\"The Dilemma of Domestic Violence in Susan Glaspell’s Trifles.\\\\\\" Journal of
Runaway Jury -- a 2003 legal thriller based on a John Grisham novel -- does not necessarily enhance the viewer's knowledge of the law, but it certainly offers an expansive view of one way of breaking the law. The film is concerned with the rise of the contemporary "jury consultant," most often used in large-scale consumer liability lawsuits such as the one depicted in the film. The legal case in Runaway Jury concerns the liability of gun manufacturers for deaths caused by their products: intriguingly Grisham's original novel dealt with similar liability cases regarding tobacco, common in the U.S.A. In the 1990s, but was altered for the screenplay. To a certain extent, this change indicates that Grisham's, and the film's, focus was never on the legal issue at stake in the actual trial. The real legal focus regards the thin line between "jury consultancy" and "jury tampering" that is demonstrated…...
mlaWorks Cited
Criminal Code of Canada (R.S.C. 19985, c. C-46). Department of Justice. Online, accessed 12 May 2011 at: http://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/C-46/
Runaway Jury. Starring John Cusack, Gene Hackman, Dustin Hoffmann. 2003.
R. v. Gayle, 2001. CanLII 4447 (ON C.A.) Online, accessed 12 May 2011 at: http://www.canlii.org/en/on/onca/doc/2001/2001canlii4447/2001canlii4447.html
Vidmar, Neil. "A Historical and Comparative Perspective on the Common Law Jury." In Vidmar, Neil (Ed.). World Jury Systems. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. Print.
Federal Grand Jury
The Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution provides that charges for all capital and "infamous" crimes be brought through an indictment by a grand jury. Although the founding fathers had envisaged the primary function of the federal grand jury as protection of the citizens against tyranny by the government, its protective role has eroded over the years -- making its current function in the criminal system highly controversial. This paper outlines the basic duties of a federal grand jury and discusses some of the controversial issues facing it.
Basic Duties
The provision of the Fifth Amendment regarding grand juries has been interpreted to mean that an indictment by a federal grand jury is required for charging federal felonies. The Supreme Court has held that this part of the Fifth Amendment is not binding on the States; hence the use of grand juries is not binding on the States. (Brenner 2003)…...
mlaReferences
Report by the Commission to Reform the Federal Grand Jury." (2000). Legislation: National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. Retrieved on June 18, 2004 at http://www.nacdl.org/public.nsf/freeform/grandjuryreform?opendocument
Brenner, Susan. (2003). "Federal Grand Juries." University of Dayton: School of Law Website. Retrieved on June 18, 2004 at http://www.udayton.edu/~grandjur/fedj/fedj.htm#Introduction
Unless a defendant waives his or her right to be indicted by a grand jury
Regular grand juries" spend more time considering evidence submitted by prosecutors, while "Special grand juries" spend more time investigating criminal activity
" The right to trial was created to protect the individual citizen from the strength and power of the government and to prevent potential influence upon the judiciary by special interests. In protecting individuals, the right to jury trial protects all of the citizenry.
The Sixth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution reads: "In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defense ." While the right to a jury trial is guaranteed by the United States Constitution in criminal prosecutions,…...
Bloom’s taxonomy is a way of using three hierarchical models to classify learning objectives. Bloom’s taxonomy breaks learning down into three broad models based on learning styles: cognitive, affective, and sensory. It then further divides each of these three larger categories into smaller areas. The cognitive domain is divided into knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. The affective domain is divided into receiving, responding, valuing, organizing, and characterizing. The sensory domain is divided into perception, set, guided response, mechanism, complex overt response, adaptation, and origination. It can be helpful to keep these various....
Infection may be the biggest health risk for people who have wounds, making wound care critical to ensuring a positive patient outcome. Wound care not only improves mortality but can also impact social and physical expectations for a patient, which means that appropriate wound care can be one of the biggest issues impacting doctors or nurses who deal with any type of injury. However, wound care focuses substantially on infection control, because infections present the greatest long-term hazards from wounds.
Generally, wound care is broken down into four or five basic steps. Those....
Traumatic brain injuries, or TBIs as they often called, are injuries to the brain that are caused by outside sources, such as a fall or a blow to the head. This differentiates them from brain injuries that are caused by internal situations, such as a stroke. TBIs include a broad group of different types of injuries, from seemingly minor concussions to injuries that clearly and significantly impact the ability to function. Because they are so varied, there are many different directions you could take in a research paper about TBIs. To help you decide what direction....
Forensic psychology refers to applying psychology to legal issues. Forensic psychology can be applied to civil and criminal legal cases but is most commonly associated with criminal cases.
Ten possible essay topics / titles for forensic psychology are:
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