Optometrist found of all things, the reason for one eye being constantly irritated in the inner corner: two microscopic eyelashes growing inversely curved toward the eye. He nipped them with tweezers–instant relief. The opthamologist missed those—different area of concern, I suppose.
Healing nicely. Optometrist’s recommendation for dry eyes? Apparently there are microscopic oil glands inside the lid, at the base of the eyelashes. Moist heat indicated to increase natural oil flow. Went to Wallyworld—I know, I know, not my favorite, but they do have a broad selection of eye stuff. And they had, beside the Systane gel for dry eyes, this moist heat compress by Bruder, exactly made for such an application. 20 seconds in the microwave, 3 minutes on the eyes. Not too inconvenient and it feels good. As a cure for dry eyes, let’s see, but I’m willing to give it a run.
We never get out of there cheap—Jane got some pants for shoveling snow (brilliant red snow suit pants) which beats camo, when you have to work at the edge of the street: screaming orange would have been the choice if we could. And Nutrisystem is now selling a Jumpstart packet of diet stuff. Hey, it’s two weeks worth of food for 44.00 and if it actually makes us lose weight, good.
And we found some house slippers for our new floor: we’re instituting the Japanese custom of house slippers, street shoes not welcome. So finding some cheap, soft, washable house slippers for guests, at 2.50 apiece, we pounced on them. We have a problem with shiny-finish laminate and tennies picking up basalt chunks from our garden. Men are a separate problem: these are small with a flashy little jewel and a top strap. We’re going to need to find some tatami slippers guys won’t feel silly in. Jane found some stretchy patterned jogging pants that are great for working on the floor.
So a day’s foray into the dens of commerce nets us an odd assortment of stuff, but kind of useful. We’ll start the Nutrisystem stuff when I’ve run out of hamburger. Right now I’ve dropped five of my holiday pounds simply using Atkins shakes for breakfast and lunch and any snacks I feel I must, must, must have or die—while having whatever we want within reason for supper. We’ll continue that until I run out of salad, chicken, and thawed hamburger and bread. Then we’ll open up the Nutrisystem packets.
Did I mention we both got called for jury duty? Lovely. It’s not that I mind it in principle—in fact I support it, but I am a critic of the American legal system as it has grown up from the Revolution—I think that we should have founded it on the system of ‘equity’ and gone by that, and that judges’ instructions are flatly unconstitutional, since they interfere with the ‘common knowledge and local knowledge’ aspect of a citizen jury: no way to impart a law degree in a judicial instruction, nor should they even try. And I don’t know how I’ll sit through a trial. I can’t go to a movie or concert without extreme pain by the end of the session. Either they have better chairs than that or I’m in trouble. Jane’s a little better, but not much.
“Men are a separate problem.” Whole books, movies, televisions series, etc. have been written on that one premise…. 😀
I went down to see my father today. He told me about his excursion to the ophthalmologist’s office yesterday…it was supposed to have been on November 5, but somehow got rescheduled for January 11. Apparently, the doctor was out of the office on November 5 (and I remember Dad telling me about that), but the receptionist insisted that Dad had called and rescheduled. I told Dad he should have called her on it and made her look back and show him in the book, especially since the doctor wasn’t even in the office that day.
Anyway, Dad’s got glaucoma, but we’ve known that for years. His pressure was read at 18, which the doctor says is not good for his case. One of the things Dad was upset about was that the technician put him up to do various tests, then tells him not to move or blink, while SHE moves the machine around….so it’s got to be reset. Then, they finally get around to measuring his pressure last thing of all, and the doctor does that after they’ve done everything else. “Look at my ear.” the doctor says, while shining that damned bright light into Dad’s eye. You can’t focus on anything with that thing glaring straight down your pupil. Well, now he gets a new prescription for drops, this time 2 times a day.
This morning, I had a temporary crown placed on the tooth that got the root canal last week. Not pleasant, but not as bad as the last one. I’ll get the permanent crown in 3 weeks. Meanwhile, I’ve got 2 other teeth that need crowns. Did I mention my dental insurance caps at $3,000 per year? These two procedures have just about wiped out my whole year’s insurance.
Why not offer flip-flops for all? An alternative are reef shoes, meant for people to wander about tide pools without getting their feet cut or damaging marine life, obviously for water use hence washable. On the 15th hand, footie socks, cheap and discardable!
We’re going to get some that don’t have ridges on the bottom—the gravel problem. It’s hard to tackle a guest and scream no! Not into the garden! 😉
In Hawaii, the tradition is ‘Shoes off at the door’, adopted from many Japanese and Chinese immigrants. Japan has the same trouble you do, they don’t want dirt and gravel getting into their nice tatami mats, so off come the street shoes!
“Mahalo For Removing Your Slippahs (But no take mo’ bettah ones when you leave!)”
OR booties?
Maybe that wasn’t so clear. I meant Operating Room, i.e. medical, booties. Your gents wouldn’t have to remove their shoes.
I have a pair of slippers that are designed for travel and for packing, they fold up into a small bag and can be stowed in a suitcase….I’ll remember when I come out next time to pack them. They don’t go anywhere but inside my house when I wear them, and in my house, that’s not very often, as my shoes come off pretty soon after I get home….
Even with that, I still manage to track a lot of junk into the house, because carrying packages, etc., I can’t just drop the shoes off at the front door…..I do have a rug shampoo machine….
At your age CJ I believe you can opt out of jury duty.
I can do it with a medical complaint and at my age can skip getting a doc to sign it, but this is kind of vague and iffy. I may mention the problem once I get there, and see what the chairs are like. I also can’t stand another juror wearing some perfumes or aftershave—migraine. If it gets too bad, it will affect my attention. That and the central problem, which is that, when bored by a story, I can mentally make it so much better—and don’t always recall that I added that part about the international terrorism angle…
“Men are a separate problem.” ROFL, aren’t they just? I have, so far, not found Mr. Right nor Mr. Kinda-OK nor Mr. Hey, He Likes Me(!) Wow… Yet. There are, as noted above, whole other issues involved in the guy problem. I freely admit this as a guy. Heh.
House shoes — I’d agree on flip-flops. You should be able to find some fairly cheap for guests, with no tread on the bottom. An alternative for the guys are the very plain, old-fashioned men’s slippers, with or without backs for the ankles.
I found recently that house shoes for guys were in some cases as expensive now as cheap boat shoes or tennis shoes. So my latest solution for house shoes? Slip-on, cheap sneakers. These are actually pretty good, and warm enough.
I was recently very unhappy when two pairs of shoes, one casual, one dress shoes, ~fell apart~ after less than two years. Granted, I didn’t pay a lot, but I’m not ~that~ hard on shoes. Wow. One was a pair of what should have been good penny loafers.
I like the idea of no shoes indoors, except my feet get cold, and I once discovered the hard way, one really must wear shoes in the kitchen or when working, lest one drop something and break or nearly break a toe. Ouch. The toe ended up OK eventually, though.
Flip-flops and tabi socks!!! 😀
Very glad your eye is doing so well, and glad to hear the doctor may have solved the eyelash irritation problem.
I like the idea of the warm compress for helping your eyes. I think I’ll have a trip to Walmart next month to look for same.
Cheaper suggestion for warm eye compresses:
I am just getting over an annoying case of pinkeye by means of OTC eye drops, warm compresses and feeling very sorry for myself. For eye compress take one small washcloth and run it under the hot tap until it warms up. Wring it out so its not too drippy and put it in a small plastic bag. Apply gently to eye.
I’ve done that for years.
I’ve still got a possible ‘live’ incision in that eye so everything has to be dry for the next bit.
Which reminds me—darn—time for more eyedrops.
Ahhh, but that’s the point of the plastic bag, dryness. (Also since pinkeye is terribly contagious and I didn’t want it in the other eye, its easier to change the bag than disinfect the washcloth)
Do the jury duty – it is extremely illuminating and one of the truly civic duties we are able to perform.
Finally a real snow storm up here in NH.
last time I got tagged for jury duty, we were sitting in courtroom for the selection process, when the two attorneys walked in and announced that the plaintiff had settled, and thank you for your time.
I don’t know that I’d purposely try to get out of the duty, but if there were any extenuating circumstances, such as you have that live incision in your eye, you need to keep it medicated and moist regularly, the court will probably excuse you. That gives you the option of sitting in the court as an onlooker, and you are then not bound to the chair and time is yours to stay or leave.
I would agree with you about judges giving instructions to the jury. This is supposed to be the jury making a decision, not the judge telling the jury what decision they should make and why. Then, of course, in some cases, the judge can just throw out the verdict and handle it themselves….which is a colossal waste of the public’s time and money, as well as removes the element of the Sixth Amendment from the trial, in my opinion.
My last call was for a drunk driving case. I was questioned about my Chemistry degree and the instruments I was familiar with, e.g. flame photometry & gas chromotography. They didn’t want me on the jury.
I do remember a strange question one of ’em asked that touched on the distinctions of guilt & innocence and who did or did not do what. I’ve since thought about that some, to the conclusion there’s little if any connection.
Since then I learned about being an Aspie. I’m curious how they’d feel about that.
If a case makes it as far as a jury trial, I note that frequently the lawyers for both the plaintiff and defendant don’t want someone who might skew results with specialized inside knowledge. Aside from not wanting jurists who have connections with the people involved in the trial, they also don’t want someone who might be able to poke holes in their theories.
Paul, can you PM me at my screen name @ gmail . com? I have a question for you that’s quite personal in nature – not about you, but I need some help, and you might be able to assist. Sorry, I hate to use this venue to make these requests, but I don’t know how else to contact you.
Thanks…..
“Asd”rin at Shejidan U. PM sent.
Maybe I should have written that as: Asdrin 😉
Note that I haven’t often visited Shejidan in the last year(s).
Thank you, I got it, and sent you a reply.
I had that happen once, back in the 70s: the defendant and his lawyers came in, and decided to plead guilty. (We must have looked like a really ferocious pool.)
I was called for jury duty last month: the week ending with Christmas. Fortunately I’m in a county with one day or one trial service, and on-line registration and notification. I didn’t have to go in.
as a lawyer myself I believe that lawyers don’t want someone on a jury who will attempt to substitute her own expertise for the evidence in the case. It isn’t about the theory of the case, it is about the evidence. Juries are supposed to decide based on admissible evidence using their common sense, but they are not supposed to introduce into the deliberations facts not put into evidence by the parties. The fear is that someone who is an expert in a field relevant to the trial will not be able to wall off the expertise and listen only to the evidence.
I heard an interesting statistic yesterday – something like 97 percent of all federal criminal trials result in pleas. So if anyone is called for federal jury duty it is highly unlikely they will have to sit through more than the minimal few days of jury pool/jury selection. For what that’s worth.
Yep, you sound like a lawyer. How can the evidence turn on a point of science that is at odds with known scientific facts? If your evidence is that he walked off the edge of the roof and did not fall down, then my knowledge of how the universe works trumps your “evidence”.
Common sense is like pornography–nobody can define it, but they (think) they know it when they see it.
My Mom always used to say I had no common sense. My argument was I am exceptionally logical, either studying for or possessed of a degree in a “hard” physical science. What she meant was more along the lines of “emotional IQ” which of course goes along with being an (undiagnosed until recently) Aspie. (Funny, the signs were there all along, just mild enough that it isn’t exceptionally obvious. I’m pretty sure some of them have been noticable here among the regulars.)
My first turn was in LA County, and we had to show up every day for a solid week! And the courthouse was in downtown LA.
common sense? Hah! I hear that term come out of the mouths of politicians, the people LEAST QUALIFIED to define, much less recognize what that actually is……common sense to me doesn’t seem to mean the same thing to say, a certain Senator from Ohio……and I’ve seen that many times……
I have to wonder if Aspies run in families; everything that I have heard and witnessed of persons with the syndrome diagnosed is flat out normal in my family, especially my father’s side of it.
I think it’s a condition that can be at least partly due to a genetic predisposition, and part of a sliding scale. If you’ve got some of the characteristics to a degree that it becomes difficult to interact normally with others, it’s considered aspie, but non-aspies often have the same characteristics but to a less extreme degree. My brother has it, and though in his case some oxygen starvation of the brain from being born with the umbilical cord around his neck can be blamed, quite a few of the aspie-traits we see in him are present in my dad, and some in me too, though we aren’t considered aspie because we’ve got a watered-down version.
There are thought to be both genetic and environmental causes.
I don’t think I’m much affected either, but it is the best explanation for a lot of the way my life has gone.
I am sure I inherited mine from my father. When I was a kid our family friends would commonly say I’m just like him, to his constarnation, but it’s quite true in many ways. My sister, on the other hand, is quite the opposite. It’s as if he had a “ectopic recombination”, wherein a piece of one chromosome was cut out of one chromosome, with the cut ends reconnected, and inserted into it’s homologous chromosome next to its matching place there. This results in deletion in one chromosome and duplication in another, often the homologous partner but not necessarily. Mutations aren’t as rare as often believed–Queen Victoria was one!
These days my hypothesis could be proved. Run a full genome on each of us and check for a duplication on one of my autosomes, where she has a deletion.
I think this pool is for municipal and superior court. Interesting the 97%. And understandable they don’t want dueling experts in the jury room. It should be an interesting experience, but I wonder what the hours will be if I do get selected and granted I can sit in the chairs over 30 minutes. If I’m in court during the day, I’ll have no choice but to work at night…you can’t drop a novel midway and then pick it up again.
In my experience, a doctor can write a letter saying one is incapable of jury duty, even permanently. Of course, these things vary by jurisdiction.
My one experience of jury duty soured me completely. Important evidence was withheld. As it happened, the evidence confirmed our verdict, but it just as well could have reversed it. So much for, “…the whole truth”! In some hypothetical future trial, since I would have no idea what was being withheld, I feel I only could morally find not guilty or hang the jury. I expect I would be dismissed from the jury pool for expressing that.
Jury duty can always be avoided with the magical incantation, “Jury nullification.”
___
You two be careful on those slick, hard floors, please!
I worked with a lady at UCLA that was on a jury where the defense lawyer was “disappointing”. She told me she’d do anything short of waking the streets to get the best possible lawyer should need arise. I thought that sensible, and never forgot it (obviously).
As aforesaid, I think jury nullification is the proper function of a citizen jury. An application of equity.
G.K. Chesterton wrote:
For someone who lives in a country where the judicial system does not use juries, but professional judges are always the ones who do the sentencing (a single judge for minor cases like traffic violations, and a panel of 3 judges for the larger cases), I find it a quite horrifying idea to be judged by a set of people who are picked at random off the street.
Considering the unthinking, illogical opinions and ideas proclaimed and held dear by ordinary people when interviewed for radio or tv, the idea that a bunch of untrained amateurs might do a better job at impartially weighing all the evidence and the consequences of their decisions than people who’ve studied for years to learn exactly that, seems quite ridiculous to me.
Judges are specifically trained to recognise their own biases (and cases with heavy possible sentences are always heard by multiple judges, as an additional safeguard); while the ordinary public seems to be very susceptible to being influenced by their own biases, and by prosecutors who play to those. Also, considering how many people vote for blithering idiots just because the soundbites they produce appeal to them, or because they look good on tv, I wouldn’t trust most of them to look through manipulative prosecutors and lawyers. An experienced judge has seen all the manipulative tricks before, maybe even used them himself in his career before the bar, and so will be less easy to influence and manipulate.
Judges here need to have years of experience on the other side of the bench before they can be appointed as judge, to be sure they’ve gained plenty of life experience as well as studying, and it’s not a political appointment – their impartiality is considered very important. Maybe that’s different in the USA, like the sheriff and district attorney being elected officials? That always makes me think the system was set up to protect the local powerful people from prosecution, if those who should arrest and prosecute them are dependent on their goodwill and campaign support to keep their jobs. The strict separation between the political and the judiciary branches, like that between church and state, seem to be a bit less strictly enforced in parts of the USA, from what I read – though that’s a tangent from the juries we were talking about.
@Hanneke – The pool is taken from ordinary citizens in accord with “a jury of your peers”. However, after that “Voir Dire is the process by which attorneys select, or perhaps more appropriately reject, certain jurors to hear a case.”
Well, that way they can perhaps stop someone who openly shows a clear bias pro or con the defendant, but it doesn’t deal with the less outspoken biases that most everybody has, and which mean that an attractive person is often believed much more readily and treated more leniently than someone who is fat and ugly, that taller people (for men certainly) are accorded more respect and their words given more weight, etc. etc. There is such a lot of unconscious and subvocal bias, there is no way this filtering process can get rid of all of it.
The same goes for the way people get attached to their worldview and pet theories, and selectively hear what agrees with those and ignore the rest – there is plenty of evidence across the internet that ordinary American people are just as likely to suffer from that as anyone else, and in some cases perhaps more likely. The scientific, fact-searching, logical thinking mindset does not seem anymore widespread in America as it is elsewhere, and considering climate-change denial, fundamentalist christian beliefs, and more than half the politicians being frozen into a dogma that dictates compromises on many subjects are taboo and only their own ideology is acceptable (and they are still being voted in, despite bringing the country close to a standstill several times over not getting what they wanted, even if that decision was reached fairly and democratically! Like letting a bunch of two-year-olds run the country?!*)- I’m not convinced any kind of filtering process will result in a benchfull of unbiased, factseeking, logical jurors, never mind if they’ve never thoroughly practised any of those skills.
With all the courtroom drama on tv, most people know what sort of things are really not acceptable to say; most will then give the socially acceptable answers. This doesn’t mean the bias isn’t present in their thinking or the way they react to things. But then, trial by public opinion in the media seems to be much more prevalent in the USA as well, so it’s probably a logical spectrum for Americans (and English too).
* Sorry, I know the Dutch concensus model horrifies all the hardliner-type politicians, but honestly I sometimes can hardly believe what I read about the way things are done in the USA. We’ve got some politicians who think doing things more like America is a good idea – I’m glad they are balanced by others, and compromise and concensus are still important, even though I disagree with a lot of the things government has changed over the past 15-20 years. It’s still better than the kind of two-party stalemate the USA seems locked into.
In many states of the US judges are elected officials, and need not ever have studied or practiced law.
Judges in my area are elected, and heaven forbid they ever find against a prosecutor or corporation!
Interesting perspective. I’d certainly like to see scientific questions referred to people who can say yea or nay to a proposition before handing it to a jury that doesn’t know, for instance, how to value DNA…the OJ Simpson trial is certainly a watershed miscarriage of sanity in American law.
I think the jury system is a good idea, in the absence of ‘aequitas’ or ‘equity’ as a guiding principle of American law. We don’t have a chancery court, and should, imho. What a jury ought to do in every instance is weigh the law itself, and decide whether there was a crime worth the penalty. I think they should have the power in both directions, which means if a guy is pleading off horse stealing because he stole a camel—they should convict.
With the scientific evidence, from what I understand it’s not unusual to get “battling experts”, with each side getting experts to testify for them. Considering scientist are used to question one another’s findings and looking for alternate explanations/hypotheses, it will often be possible to find an expert to give an opposing opinion.
From what I gather, the jury – consisting most likely entirely of people who don’t know the field – is then left to decide which expert to believe.
Or does the jury, like Dutch judges, call in their own renowned experts to help weigh the expert testimonies and explain them until everyone who has a voice in the decision understands the ramifications of all the scientific evidence, including the reputations of the duelling experts in the relevant field?
No, so the prejudice in most communities is to convict. “If he wasn’t guilty, he wouldn’t be here!” This contradicts Blackstone’s formulation, “It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer.”
After all, the “innocent until proven guilty” doesn’t work, because you are arrested as a suspect because the police assume you are guilty. You are arraigned by the prosecutor before a grand jury because they assume you are guilty. BUT, the one saving thing I find essential – onus probandi is on the prosecution.
However, in some cases where it’s not only a criminal offense, but also a civil offense, e.g., assault and battery, then the defendant may be subject to both a criminal and civil trial, and the rules of evidence and procedure differ. This is what happened during O.J. Simpson’s criminal trial, he was found “not guilty”, but in the civil suit that was brought against him by the families, he was found guilty of “depriving them of their civil rights”.
I don’t believe the Dutch system is feasible here due to the overwhelming number of court cases. In this country, you can sue anyone for just about anything, and unless the court finds it frivolous, your case proceeds. If juries were allowed to call in witnesses at their own request, the trials would never proceed very quickly, you’d have a civil war in the jury’s deliberation sessions, and who knows how much it would cost the taxpayers to conduct this trial? No, we can’t just eliminate the way we do things, there is a little codicil to our Constitution which declares that every accused has the right to a trial by a jury of their peers. Quote: “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.” But then, I’m not a lawyer, and I certainly don’t claim to be an expert…..but when the language of the highest law of the land is pretty clear, then it’s hard for the lawyers to start with their obfuscations.
It’s interesting to learn a bit about such a different view on how best to achieve the same end: convicting the guilty and giving them sentences that are considered reasonable by the society they live in, while making sure the innocent aren’t punished for things they didn’t do.
Thank you all for explaining.
No, a jury cannot call-in its own experts, they have the expert testimony already. 😉 And that’s one reason they wouldn’t want someone who’s a pretty good all-round scientist on the jury if scientific fact or reasoning was invloved. Chemistry is a very good Science degree! (My complaint in “lower division” was that we had to take as much physics as physics majors, calculus and analytical geometry as math majors, and the chemistry to boot! I spent a year or two classifying galaxies from SDSS and the Hubble Deep Field for Galaxy Zoo (GZ2 & GZH). When you’re born and raised in LA, where the ground is none too steady underfoot, you might get interested in some aspects of geology. But mostly it’s because my bit of the “spectrum” makes my brain a sponge of data and information. That’s what Aspies do.)
I have ocular rosesea, where the oil-type tear ducts don’t produce much anymore. Wintertime is especially annoying as my tears will cover the front of my coat. Besides a couple scripts, he also recommended the moist heat eye pillow (also from Bruder). Such an improvement! I’ll listen to a book on tape or teaching company class at bedtime until the eye pillow is almost room temperature again. Well worth the few minutes it takes.
The jury system developed in Britain as a way to nullify unjust laws, and to prevent oppression of ordinary people by the rich and powerful.
A jury could acquit despite all the evidence and despite the law, if they felt that a conviction would be unjust. So in the 18th century, for example, when stealing was a capital crime, juries would often acquit if they felt that the sentence would be too harsh under the circumstances.
Today, however, juries are not really competent to hear scientific and technical evidence. The more technically complex the case, the less it is suited to a jury trial.
We also see that intense media attention and high-powered lawyers can distort a trial, no matter what the legal system is. For example, O.J. Simpson in the US, Amanada Knox in Italy, and Oscar Pistorius in South Africa – three very different legal systems, but three distorted outcomes.
I can see the jury system as a possible solution in that situation, if the laws which are generally considered too harsh can’t or won’t be changed.
But if that is how it’s meant to work, tailoring the sentence to the specific situation (both ways, not hanging a starving person for stealing bread, and the convicting CJ’s camel thief instead of letting him get off on a technicality), then why is there such a lot of mandatory heavy sentencing for relatively minor offenses built into the laws? From what I’ve read specifically the three strikes and you’re out doctrine seems to be forcing very high sentences in the USA, which can get people jailed for decades or life even for ‘victimless’ crimes like possession or smoking of marijuana.
This would seem to me to negate the reason for having the jury system, if being able to tailor the sentence to the situation is the rationale behind throwing open the system to manipulation and unequal sentencing for equal crimes.
@Hanneke – Let’s take a large step back, about 250 years or so!
When Europeans came to these shores, they were isolated from each other, and they spread out into “wilderness”. (I accept any Cherokee or member of the Five Nations may dispute that characterization, not without basis.) But my point is (1) that created pockets where “idiosyncratic” cultural norms became entrenched, e.g. the Appalachian music and accents are the best extant examples of Elizabethan English/Scots music and speech.
(2) New England was settled by Puritans, and puritan attitudes, e.g. “Blue Laws”, have persisted in America not least because the Revolutionary War was very much a “Northern thing”, “Boston Tea-Party”, “Concord Minutemen”, etc. And even where Puritans didn’t go, the Elizabethan/Georgian attitudes immigrants brought weren’t very liberal. So when they formed a new political system for themselves, well…
(3) The “genius” (considering the era) of our Founding Fathers was they defined a political system that created “dynamic balance”, not “static” of monarchies and dictatorships. (“Strict Constructionists” have missed the point!) (European Parliamentary systems are largely retrofits.) Anyhow, as a consequence there is considerable flexibility in our political system, probably more than many Americans can individually adapt to. As a conseqience of both clauses in that sentence, the US went through a period of “fear and retribution” last last century which led to those applications of law. But our “dynamic balance” will bring us back again, I am sure. After all our 18th Constitutional Ammendment mandated Prohibition, and that didn’t work. (Not to mention, Dred Scott & Brown v Board of Education.) The pendulum will swing back.
The problem with depending on jury nullification is that it’s convict or don’t, and the decision about the penalty is distinct and often just up to the judge and the law–no jury.
Juries are kept in the dark. If the jury knew the defendant had previous convictions, it could prejudice them, “Well, he probably did it again.” So, they don’t know that they’re trying his third marijuana conviction and the result will be decades in prison. And–horrors!–if they did know, they might nullify the law!
Also, juries are never allowed to “look stuff up” or refer to anything except the evidence permitted and presented in court. If the prosecution has an expert testify pi is exactly 3 (assume the case depends on this) and the defense does not put an expert up to say that’s false, the jury pretty much has to assume the expert is right since he’s undisputed. Certainly, if a juror brings in a math reference that states pi = 3.14159…, that’s juror misconduct. If a juror states he knows as a fact it’s 3.14something, I’m not sure whether that’s allowed or not.
And “forensic” whoevers are merely people who have testified in court. They aren’t experts in the usual sense of the term. A startling example was connected with the Madrid train station bombing of 2004. A successful lawyer in Oregon was arrested based on a “100%” FBI fingerprint match. The identification was wrong, and actually the science had never been done to prove fingerprints were unique–everyone just believed it; I don’t know if it has been done. Fingerprint “experts” aren’t very reliable.
A huge number of “experts” support prosecutions using unproven techniques, such as bite identification. Obviously, “experts” make more money on the prosecution side than the defense side.
Further, prosecutors have a path into politics, and are often valued on the basis of their conviction rate. A defense attorney, who has “helped criminals go free” (in political terms) has no such path, and little chance of advancement.
It is probably impossible for a jury to distinguish between a hopeless defense and an incompetent defense.
[/rant]
Well, that’s probably one reason why the US has the highest prison population per capita in the world – many times higher than any other developed country.
Other factors are the ‘war on drugs’, the privatization of prisons, plea-bargaining, and just plain ol’ racism.
Short article for a start:
https://www.laprogressive.com/american-injustice-system/
But is that a fair comparison of their legal systems in general?
No. Those were examples of how intense media attention can distort a trial in any legal system.
On autism spectrum disorders, I recently read NeuroTribes by Steve Silberman. This is by far the best book I’ve seen on the subject.
Silberman gives the whole interesting history of how and why understanding of autism spectrum disorders has changed over time. In the UK, the book won the 2015 Samuel Johnson Prize for the best non-fiction book of the year, and in the US it was a New York Times bestseller.
His account of Hans Asperger is particularly interesting. Asperger comes across as a good and perceptive man who had a difficult time under the Nazi occupation of Austria. On two separate occasions the Gestapo came to arrest him, and he was only saved by his hospital director, who was a prominent member of the Nazi Party, but had also known Asperger for many years. Silberman shows how the way Asperger presented his research was affected by his need to save the patients in his hospital.
He has a talk about it on the TED website. Asperger’s paper was published the year I was born. There wasn’t much attention to it until relatively recently. No wonder I was never diagnosed, and that may have been a blessing, that I was “mainstreamed”.