Re: Please poke holes in this (was Re: Optimal location of world

On 26 veebr, 18:56, John Schilling <schil...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> On Mon, 25 Feb 2008 15:23:39 +0000 (UTC), jdnic...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 (James
>
> Nicoll) wrote:
> >In article <fptluk$ko...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>,
> >Andrew Plotkin  <erkyr...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>
> [Trial by opinion poll]
>
> >>Also, you get a society in which it's guaranteed that nobody can be
> >>held responsible for the major decisions. I suspect you'd be better
> >>off hiring Ming the Merciless as your country's CEO.
>
> Jury trials frequently make major decisions, and there doesn't seem
> to be any mechanism by which jurors can be held accountable.  Possibly
> someone at some point thought that was a feature rather than a bug;
> it isn't entirely obvious though.
>
There were problems with judges who tried to punish jurors when the
judge disliked the verdict.

> >    That was a plot point with Bass' megajuries: extremely large
> >juries seemed to be more likely to go for the death penalty, since
> >responsibility was smeared out over so many people.
>
> Also, extremely large juries realistically have to be able to convict
> and sentence on a majority vote, possibly supermajority but not the
> unanimity of the traditional Anglo-American criminal trial.

Scottish juries have 15 members, and they can convict by 8 votes.
(Supermajority requirement applies when 2 or 3 jurors have been
excused)

> And there
> will probably be rather less in the way of deliberation, as it becomes
> impractical for everyone to have their say - most jurors will be mere
> spectators voting on the performance, and the decision will be made on
> the first vote.
>
> With a unanimous-jury requirement, the winning verdict is the one which
> can claim the "It's not my first choice, but I'll settle for this if it
> means we can stop arguing and go home" vote.  That is necessarily going
> to be a compromise, and the death penalty is rather uncompromising.
>
In other words, 1 juror out of 12 who is firmly against capital
punishment can cause a hung jury.