Twelve Stupid Men

The jury’s out on trial by jury

In a shocking turn of events, Lawrence “Scooter” Libby was found guilty on 4 out of 5 charges that he obstructed justice and perjured himself under oath. That in and of itself isn’t shocking. The shocking part is in the jury itself. During the proceedings, they sent notes to the judge, the most notorious of which was one where they asked what exactly Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald’s case was.

Now, I’ll be the first one to admit I’m not a legal scholar, but I’d say if the jury can’t discern what your entire argument in favor of convicting Libby, you’ve done a pretty crappy job in making your case. Either that or Libby’s got one heck of a case for an appeal on the basis that he wasn’t tried by a jury of his peers. Then again, I don’t think there are too many older white men with a nickname from a character on “The Muppet Show” available in the jury pool.

And the post-trial commentary from some of the jurors in the Libby case only cements this. One juror commented that the jury felt Libby was the fall guy for Dick Cheney and George W. Bush. They even commented that they wished Cheney and Bush had testified. Well, gee, I’m sorry that Bush and Cheney were too busy running the most powerful country in the world to stop by and have a chat with you folks. And furthermore, if they honestly believed Libby was the fall guy, why did they vote to convict?

I imagine it’s thinking like this that has kept me out of jury duty. (Well, either that or my “I Heart Capital Punishment for Jaywalkers” t-shirt.) Some would say this is a good thing. Imagine being on trial and seeing my mug looking back at you from juror’s row. Of course, that would mean I’d have to get through the screening process, which couldn’t get more bizarre if David Lynch were writing the procedures. These days, attorneys aren’t looking for sober-minded individuals who can weigh evidence and deliver a fair and sensible verdict. Nope, they’re looking for the people who bring three grocery carts full of cat food to the “12 Items or Fewer” line because to them all the cans of cat food constitute one item.

I think the reason the quality of juries has done downhill in recent years is because we don’t take the concept of jury duty seriously. What’s the first thing you think of when you get notice that you’re going to be called for jury duty? If you’re like most people, you’re dreaming up excuses to get out of it. If you’re like me, you’re wondering what the judge is wearing under his or her robe. The law of averages says out of the possible jury pool, there is bound to be a number of sensible, intelligent people available. And these are the ones who will go to any length to avoid their civic duty. That leaves people like the cat food shopper referenced above to render a legally binding verdict. If that isn’t a deterrent to crime, I don’t know what is.

As frequent readers of my pieces know, I try to come up with solutions to problems. They may not always be good ideas, but hey, you get what you pay for, right? There are two ways to address the current situation with jury trials.

1) Jurors have to be licensed. After seeing the Libby jury ask for a definition of reasonable doubt, a concept that anybody with half a brain cell could figure out after watching 10 minutes of “Boston Legal,” it’s clear we need to start licensing jury members. I’m not usually a big government liberal type, but in this case, I’m willing to make an exception in the hopes of getting a competent jury.

Just about any decision a jury makes will have an impact, whether it be limited to just the case before them or if the verdict can be used in other cases. That’s not the kind of situation in which you want to put someone who wants to wrap up the trial before the big “Mama’s Family” marathon this weekend. So, it’s important that we get qualified people to sit on a jury. For this, a licensing process has to be instituted. If it’s good enough for people who want to own a gun, it’s good enough for people charged with convicting people of illegally owning and using a gun.

2) We need a new appeals process. The other option is to keep the trial by jury at the lower court level, but change the appeals process so that bad decisions by a lower court can be overturned quickly and with a minimum impact. For this, I propose doing away with the current appeals courts and replacing them with the judges from the TV judge shows. Imagine what would happen if the Libby trial had been conducted by Judge Judy. Fitzgerald’s arguments would have been toast before the first commercial break. With the sheer volume of stupid cases that get tried at the lower courts that get appealed, we need people in place who can cut through all the bull, ask important questions, and deliver a solid verdict. And if they can get the cases done as quickly as they can on TV, the backlog of cases will be done in a week or two, tops, even with commercial breaks!

Although the right to a trial by jury is in the Constitution, most people appearing before a jury are lucky to get a jury of Paris Hilton’s peers, let alone theirs. Whether it’s Scooter Libby or Scooter, the guy charged with stealing Tic Tacs from the grocery store one at a time, we need to do something to improve the jury trial before the miscarriages of justice outnumber the good verdicts out there. We can do better.

Okay, given the fact that Al Gore won the Best Documentary Oscar for “An Inconvenient Truth,” maybe we can’t after all.

And that’s the Bottom Line.

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