okay
okay well i uh i guess because i work quite a bit with lawyers i'm not a lawyer uh that i find a lot of things are so specialized that i'm not sure
and i i look at it more from the civil side of things that juries have any sense of of the value of and worth so that they have real problems when it comes to uh uh they can find guilt or innocence
right
uh but then when you quantify things and that might also hold criminal trials for how many years is appropriate uh that they might leave it to somebody else who uh has expertise in that
right i agree too i don't think the jury should be the ones that that put the sensings sentencings down i think the judges should or even a panel of of lawyers if if it got to that point
might be better apt than just regular civil people
uh-huh
not knowing you know exactly what things are from from murder on up to like tax stuff you know
yeah because i find that uh i've been on a few juries and uh as a say i i tend to be around uh civil cases
because i've been an expert witness some and uh
many matters are so complicated that it's so hard to uh come up with the fair value uh
or the fair sentence and one thing that you get if you have some expertise is
uh you know the range of of possible values or terms or you know how heinous was the crime
right
uh that uh when i only do something one two or three times i'm hardly an expert on it and
most juries
over a period of five or ten years you might sit on three
yeah and
and so how do you relate as to whether this
particular armed robbery was a you know worth five years or twenty five
right that's yeah and and and most people that do sit on juries some people just sit on them once in their lifetime you know if they're that lucky sometimes or you know what whatever the case may be and and may not have any idea
um-hum
of what what the standard punishment would be for it and it they may have some different idea i mean it might be more important for them to put a sentencing sentencing sentencing down that was uh
yes
longer you know that didn't fit the punishment didn't fit the crime
um-hum
or not long enough or you know whatever the case may be
yeah
i i think the judges do have that that better knowledge of it the only thing i worry about sometimes is if if you get somebody in there that that has a name that is the defendant and
you know sometimes might have have more pull which that does happen i mean we we can't say it doesn't because it does happen i mean not everybody is is you know
um-hum
has has the right morals sometimes and people can be paid off or politically or
um-hum
whatever the case may be and sometimes that's not real fair either though so
well one of the others things that gets me on on the juries is that often in the newspaper
i i tend to hear two things well that go on one is you often see in the headlines
the big numbers
um-hum
uh and many of those get overturned or get reduced in terms of sentences or get changed
right
by a judge or an Appeals Court and that never makes the the press and so when uh you or i as an individual
gets on a jury we tend to have certain mental images of what's what because we see the headlines
uh and we don't have uh again a lot of knowledge so we don't know what is really going on what is uh
really the range of sentences or awards that are uh are actually uh in the end applied
right right well well also what i don't think is fair either is when you have like a say a rapist come in and and his attorney
gets his sentences sentencing reduced because he's gone to a lesser charge like i don't know what assault or something or
um-hum
but which that doesn't make any sense to me either i know it's hard to prove rape and whatnot and and and the person that was raped or whatever doesn't i mean it's embarrassing and all this other stuff and they they're put on like
um-hum
they were the ones that caused it or whatever but to me when you do the crime
then you should pay for whatever you did and and you shouldn't be able to go on the lesser charge i don't i don't think that's right because all's that's going to do is say oh well you know that was a breeze i can go out and do it again and you know
yeah
have the same thing happen that's that's not right
well that's where uh uh the role of juries is is restricted and uh i'm not sure i'd want to change that aspect of it one is it's restricted in the sense that
juries only decide the charges that are actually uh brought you know if it's first degree rape second degree degree rape or whatever
right
they only get to decide on that well okay this person has been charged with first degree rape uh and you can decide guilt or innocence on that uh such like maybe in murder they get to choose whether it's uh premeditated or
um-hum
one or two of the lesser degrees and the other thing that juries are restricted on and and at least to me this has been one of the frustrating things in my even in my own experiences that you
usually don't get to hear all the information it's what information is presented and
yeah
uh i don't know that juries have a right to know more because in a sense we call those safeguards but often juries hear only a fraction of the of the story
when they have to decide guilt or innocence
and to me how can you how can you make a decision if you don't have all of the evidence in front of whether it be whether it pertains to the case or not somebody thinks it it had because they've got it there
um-hum
so the lawyers the two lawyers are the ones that have all the information don't they
yeah and the truth that's brought out is uh as i say when i've heard about you know the oath is to tell the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth
is that they want uh they don't want uh the whole truth i mean you can say yeah the because stories look very different when you hear different parts of the of the truth
they only put part of it
yeah
right well that's just like that old witness game well it's a game kids play too but um
somebody did it just ah
just for your train of thought where they they showed something
and they asked there there there were uh like four people
