Jury selection is underway in Miami for an attempted murder, assault and robbery case. The alleged assailant was a Jet Ski-riding Trump supporter who attacked two Biden supporters who were also on Jet Skis, which is the most Miami thing ever.
The Miami Herald notes the court is having trouble seating a jury because of political polarization and asks, “Does an impartial jury exist?”
Triggered, police say, by a Joe Biden flag on a Jet Ski, Eduardo Acosta allegedly went ballistic and attacked two men, firing at them from his own personal watercraft as they fled on the water and then chasing them down and threatening them at gunpoint — all while repeating a conspiracy that Biden supporters are child molesters.
Two years later, Acosta, 39, is fighting charges that include two counts of premeditated attempted murder with a weapon, two counts of aggravated assault with a weapon and robbery with a weapon. His trial began this week as attorneys attempted to select a jury.
What’s typically the more tedious part of a trial, the jury selection process in Acosta’s trial — which has lasted two days and could spill into next week — has exposed raw feelings, with dozens of potential jurors forced to discuss their feelings about the country’s polarized politics.
“It’s not that I think Biden is awesome, but Trump represents everything that I… have a disdain for,” said the woman. “I think he’s a vile human being.” She was promptly dismissed.
One by one, other jurors followed with similarly intimate stories on how the last four years in politics had impacted their ability to be objective.
Several said they knew what it was like to almost lose friends, or to try to move past hurtful conversations with relatives divided over political ideologies. “Things have been said that there’s no taking back,” one potential juror told attorneys.
I read an article a while back that speculated AG Merrick Garland wouldn’t ever indict Trump because he knows it would be impossible to find an impartial jury, and therefore, Trump would beat the rap. That take seems quaint after the feds raided Trump’s Florida dump.
But imagine how hard it would be to find a group of adult Americans who don’t have strong feelings about the bloated orange meat sack. I’d be kicked off a jury faster than you can say “voir dire.”
In the Miami case, the defendant’s lawyer is a wingnut podcaster, so that should be interesting.
Anyhoo, open thread for all who celebrate!
glc
Tossing in a bit of news:
Liz Truss sacks finance minister
Tony Jay
I’ll do it!
He’s guilty as fuck, BTW
Anonymous At Work
When I deliver lectures that include the Nuremberg Trials, I don’t use multiple officials from the Trump Criminal Administration outright but I do heavily and obliquely imply that such.
Mr. Longform
I would just say, “I can objectively discern truth from reality, I accept the evidence of science, I am persuadable by logical explanations, and I would weigh the evidence in this case as fairly as possible.” I guess that would out me right off the bat.
Dorothy A. Winsor
The assailant was carrying a gun on his jetski? WTF?
Matt McIrvin
Are these peremptory challenges (which are limited in number), or is having strong feelings about Trump actually considered sufficiently material to this case that it would unacceptably bias an attempted murder verdict? If so it seems like a universal get-out-of-jail-free card: just shout Trumpy stuff while you murder somebody and nobody can convict you.
jonas
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
As BC points out, this was in Florida…
MattF
I’ve been called for jury duty and never got past voir dire. I suspect the combination of a Ph.D. and a first cousin who’s an FBI agent does the trick.
In other news, a new dishwasher! The button panel of the old one broke off in my hand when I tried to open its front door, so no choice. Got a Bosch, similar to the old one— main difference is a third rack above the usual two.
trollhattan
@Dorothy A. Winsor: This was my first thought; perhaps my second thought after pondering how one flies a flag from a jetski.
People be weird.
Also, I hate jetskis nearly as much as I hate gas leafblowers. They’re basically leafblowers people ride on the water.
Tony Jay
@glc:
She’s doomed. Doomed, I tells ya!
Betty Cracker
@trollhattan: True about the aquatic leaf blowers, but have you ever heard an airboat? It’s the most obnoxious vessel by a mile. Yesterday, hubby and I were looking out at the river from the porch, and a couple of Jet Skis went by. They sounded quiet to us, and we were wondering if modern Jet Skis are quieter or if we’re so used to airboats that they sound quiet by comparison.
trollhattan
@MattF: Sole time I made it to voir dire, I trolled the DA into using one of her peremptories by noting I have PD office friends. “I’ll be a citizen when it fits my schedule better.”
Rest of the time I have either not needed to appear, or sat around the jury room for a few hours before being dismissed. During covid it was extra weird at the courthouse.
Tom Levenson
@MattF: you are smarter than I and my wife were.
We got Bosch for our dishwasher in a kitchen remodel in 2014. It’s been great. Needed one for a different project last year. Got seduced by an LG that was even quieter than the Bosch. Loathe it; doesn’t clean well, has worse racks than the Bosch etc.
I forgot the cardinal rule of consuming in an economy based on too much choice: if you find something that works, stop.
As in: Don’t think. It hurts the team.
Tony Jay
@trollhattan:
We stopped by Loch Lomond this summer on our way back from Lismore. Absolutely glorious scenery, utterly ruined by one unaborted fuckermuck on a jet ski.
If it hadn’t been for all the witnesses I’d have broken out the long-distance problem-remover, but it wasn’t to be.
Tom Levenson
@Tony Jay: I’m guessing the Home Secretary gets the sack next week, and Truss falls the week after. You?
trollhattan
@Betty Cracker: Have never seen much less heard an airboat, although it seems possible they’re used in the Sac-San Joaquin Delta, with all the marshes and sloughs. I can’t imagine how they could possibly be made quiet, considering how the things work.
Hope the dudes who own them have all learned ASL.
Barney
I don’t see how it’s “quaint”. Retrieving government property (including some that is vital for national security) isn’t something you’d put off if you didn’t think you could get an unbiased jury for subsequent charges. Garland took the documents back because it was the right thing to do, whether or not he can get a conviction.
trollhattan
@Tony Jay: Truss & Co. would make a fine if morbid comedy script, if it were not for the fact they’re so actively trying to ruin a nation already on life support. “Let’s rip out these wires and tubing, then pinch these hoses and let the Free Markets (PBUH) take over and see what happens.”
I skipped to the last chapter and already know how that turns out. Apologies for not entombing Reagan in concrete to prevent his corpse from crossing the Atlantic.
Amir Khalid
RIP Robbie Coltrane.
Matt McIrvin
@MattF: I’ve only gotten TO voir dire once in all the times I’ve gone in. Massachusetts has “one day or one trial” jury duty, and they call in a lot of people, so it’s very common to just be sent home without even having to answer questions, because they got a jury together.
I didn’t particularly try to get out of jury duty when they did ask me if I could be impartial under whatever conditions, but I probably sounded too noncommittal about it, because I’m congenitally suspicious of my own biases. It was a pretty disturbing case so I was not particularly upset about being booted.
trollhattan
@Tom Levenson: We’re on Team Miele. First lasted twenty years and the second is doing just fine, so far.
Tony Jay
@Tom Levenson:
Depending on how eager the Tories are to put off an immediate internal civil-war, Truss goes after the weekend or she’s allowed to stay in place as a figurehead while real power devolves to a Cabinet where all the major posts are held by other factions.
Either way, the crazies like Braverman and Coffey have to go tooty sweetie. Maybe this weekend.
Omnes Omnibus
An impartial juror isn’t someone that has no opinions and has ignored everything going on in the world. Rather, it is someone the lawyers can trust to set biases aside, consider only the evidence presented in court, and make a reasonable decision based on the evidence.
Omnes Omnibus
@Amir Khalid: Aw fuck.
Tony Jay
@trollhattan:
We had Thatcher. Her ghastly penumbra permeates everything wrong with this country since the 1970s.
trollhattan
@Amir Khalid: Aww, so sorry to hear. First got acquainted with “Cracker” and everything I’ve seen him in since, has been excellent.
Tony Jay
@Amir Khalid:
What? Damn.
Paul in KY
@Tony Jay: vis a vis TFG, it would be ‘I promise you a fair trial and a clean hanging’.
Betty Cracker
@Omnes Omnibus: You don’t say…
bbleh
@Matt McIrvin: IANAL, but having been through many a voir-dire and served on 3 juries, I would guess it’s not quite that simple. I think it would have to be not only that you have strong feelings one way or the other, but also that for some reason you couldn’t set them aside and make your decision on the basis of the evidence and the law. Eg, I can see saying “yes I’m a dyed-in-the-wool Democrat, and I think Trump is a damaged, heinous, and dangerous human being, but that’s immaterial to whether somebody threatened somebody else with a gun, and I’m perfectly capable of setting aside my feelings and/or sanity-checking my conclusions by mentally ‘switching the flags.'”
Of course, if this were in Aileen Cannon’s courtroom, it would be a different story …
trollhattan
@Tony Jay: Ronnie’s bestie. I imagine him asking Deaver, “What was the name of that smart lady? Get me a call with her, will you?” three times/week. “Hi Maggie, Ronny. What union should I destroy this week?”
Tony Jay
@trollhattan:
“All of them, Ronald. All of them”.
Paul in KY
@trollhattan: They can be fun to ride. Understand your hatred of them, though. Very loud & usually ridden by drunk jerkoffs.
Betty Cracker
@Barney: I guess I just suck at communicating today (a pity since that’s my job), but that wasn’t the point I was trying to make at all.
GENERAL NOTE: Kindly ignore the OP content and enjoy the open thread!
Matt McIrvin
@bbleh:
Yeah… and that would probably still get you kicked through a peremptory challenge, but each side only has a finite number of those to spend.
Omnes Omnibus
@Betty Cracker: Too many people assume that having any opinion on anything will get you struck from a jury. You would be surprised how often it comes up. Forgive me for feeling it necessary to make clear something that basic.
ETA: There is a lot of legal stuff that I assume people know because it seems basic to me that ends up with other commenters asking for explanations.
Tony Jay
@Paul in KY:
I’m afraid I’d get as far as “a fair trial” before throat punching the ill-formed pustule and taking my chances with a friendly jury.
Layer8Problem
@Amir Khalid: Ahh, shite. Finest Dr. Johnson I ever saw.
Geminid
@trollhattan: I don’t know if anyone is selling electric airboats yet. There are electric propeller driven boats on the market, so I guess it’s just a matter of time.
trollhattan
Tell me you’re out of fucking missiles without saying you’re out of missiles.
WaterGirl
@MattF: I took out that third rack that goes at the top, it had a terrible off-putting smell.
Other than that, I love my Bosch dishwasher.
Paul in KY
@Tony Jay: Have never heard of ‘unaborted fuckermuck’. I will steal this one for the appropriate occasion.
Baud
@Paul in KY:
Christmas is almost here.
bbleh
@Tony Jay: I have long considered long-distance target-practice to be an excellent potential solution to several problems, beginning with plutocrats on golf-courses.
And I think after the first few scores — which needn’t even be fatal — no more would be necessary, because it would Send The Message, and for those thick enough not to get it, all that would be needed subsequently would be some firing into the air, or just a recording, to get them to scatter.
Paul in KY
@Amir Khalid: Think I’ve only ever seen him as Hagrid and boy did he ever own that role. I loved Hagrid.
Layer8Problem
@Omnes Omnibus: Does asking about “jury nullification” do anything? Joking aside, I put jury service up there with regular voting as an obligation.
Martin
I don’t think it’s that hard, TBH. There are a LOT of people, me included, that are trained in how to separate personal feelings from professional responsibilities – and it’s just a matter of finding those people and making sure they know they need to put their professional brain on. Most any judge, for instance, could be on that jury. A lot of politicians could. Doctors do this all the time. Practicing psychologists, etc.
I despise Trump, but not as much as I value a functional legal system.
I did voir dire once because their description of the case was a situation for the defendant (wasn’t at the scene but had knowledge the gunman went off to do a thing and had a gun) that I found myself in during my job and struggled with professionally because doing the right thing nearly got me fired. The only thing that saved my job is that the gunman did use the gun. Had the gunman not used the gun, I was fired. And that’s kind of fucked up how I evaluate how to navigate institutions, institutional incentives, policy making, etc.
I said that I thought I could be impartial, but I was at the moment having an emotional reaction to the whole situation. The judge dismissed me, not the prosecutor.
Tom Levenson
@Tony Jay: Braverman really is special, isn’t she? And thanks for the info.
Tony Jay
@Paul in KY:
It’s yours. Nothing I like better than coming up with new ways to insult people who deserve scorn.
@bbleh:
It’s educational and good for society at large. Should get a bloody medal.
geg6
@trollhattan:
My ex and I had jet skis. We also had a boat. I loved my jet ski. It was so much fun to ride in our pool of the Ohio. We’d get out of the way of the barges when they came through and then jumped their wakes after they passed. It was a blast. We never, ever rode them drunk and don’t know anyone who did. We were boaters for over 20 years and rarely saw anyone boating or jet skiing unsafely. Maybe it has less to do with the jet ski and more to do with the idiot riding it. Or (and I don’t know where you live) it might be the difference between riding on the ocean/lake and on a river.
Layer8Problem
@trollhattan: “Our 1-800-Please-Oh-Please-Negotiate-to-Our-Advantage phone lines are standing by.”
WaterGirl
@Betty Cracker: I don’t think it’s you, Betty. For what it’s worth, I understood the point you were making.
HinTN
@MattF: We’ve got a Bosch and that damn panel / door handle has broken off twice. It’s the weak link in an otherwise awesome machine. Thankfully, it’s easily replaced.
RSA
My first acquaintance as well. Bonus: Seeing Christopher Eccleston and Robert Carlyle for the first time.
The Moar You Know
I won’t get struck because of my politics, I’ll get struck because of my unshakable belief, after watching the “criminal justice” system all my life, that all cops are liars. May be a small lie, may be a whopper, but they all lie, constantly.
I’m not trying to be cute or get out of jury duty, either. This is one of my bedrock core beliefs.
Matt McIrvin
@Martin: I’m probably as good as anyone off the street at setting my personal biases aside and making an impartial judgment. What I’m not good at is being confident that I can set my personal biases aside and make an impartial judgment. I do not trust my own priors because I’ve been trained by long experience not to. So I probably sound like a ridiculous waffler in these situations.
Tony Jay
@Tom Levenson:
Braverman is so out of her depth as to be ridiculous. Desperate enough to be dangerous, but not a leader.
Badenoch, now, she’s a cold eyed killer.
patrick II
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
In case he met a criminal with a gun on a jetski.
Paul in KY
@Tony Jay: You could certainly argue that you were ‘triggered’!
Paul in KY
@Baud: It actually goes well with some Christmas carols.
The Moar You Know
@Dorothy A. Winsor: I can’t get around that either. There is simply no good explanation for carrying a gun on a jetski, and about ten reasons I can think of off the bat why it would be a very bad idea.
Geminid
@geg6: They do have electric jet skis now. These could become popular if they can achieve price parity.
I bet electric airboats will be popular. I imagine a few tinkerers already have them. It would not be that hard to adapt a golf cart motor to turn an enclosed fan.
...now I try to be amused
@Matt McIrvin:
If voir dire has taken this long then I’m guessing they’ve used up their peremptory challenges already.
That is Trump’s own strategy to stay out of jail, so why not? The Republicans’ politicization of everything has extended to crime.
Tony Jay
@Paul in KY:
“Don’t jail me, Gunvor, Ee was a wrongun an’ no mistake.”
MattF
@HinTN: Interesting. My old dishwasher was old, though. All the buttons had fallen off and I’d recently seen some powdery residue on washed dishes. Really was time for a new one.
Betty Cracker
Maybe Photoshop should be outlawed…
trollhattan
@The Moar You Know: My sole “nope” would be a capital case. Our outgoing DA is a fan of the death penalty (in California where no governor will allow an execution, going forward) and I would declare before a judge that I will not cross the line between justice and revenge.
That would be a less than 1% chance in a typical mix of trials, of course.
Suzanne
Ugh. Ugh.
I will say nothing in regards to this supposed tough guy being “triggered”.
I am just so grossed out by these people. They’re so unseemly. They’re just so freaking gross. Loud and belligerent and toxic AF and just terrible.
Baud
@Betty Cracker: Haha. That definitely needs to violate the penal code.
Kropacetic
@Betty Cracker: So many badass memes for Democrats lately. Even ones produced by the right.
Paul in KY
@The Moar You Know: One of my core beliefs is: Stay away from cops. In any situation, try and stay away from them.
I think your guideline is spot on, as well.
trollhattan
@MattF: Ours still “worked” normally per the repair guy, but similarly, dishes were not coming out clean so we bit the bullet and got the new one. Magically, dishes came out clean again! (And my spouse stopped yelling at me for doin’ it rong.
I suspect the pump was not providing enough pressure, even if it still moved water. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
cmorenc
I was once seated on a jury in a federal criminal case, even though I was a lawyer at the time and made that known to the judge and parties (I have since retired from law in good standing, but have gone to inactive status with the bar). Not only that, I was elected foreman when the case went to verdict (guilty on one count, not guilty on the 17 others).
What impressed me was that although my fellow jurors were salt-of-the-earth, more tradesmen and office workers than college grads – in our discussion to reach a verdict, *every* single one of the 12 of us caught some important nuance of fact or implication thereof, which the rest of us missed or overlooked, and the discussion among us was quite civil, rational, and sensible Ours was a specimen example of how an unbiased, sensible jury is supposed to work, even though the case involved firearms.
One interesting aspect of the case was that although we all thought the defendant was in fact guilty of all 18 distinct crimes, none of them “lesser included” charges within others – we also all thought that in the overall circumstances of the defendant, the feds had piled on far more charges than the nature of the offenses deserved. We were aware that if we found him guilty of all 18, federal sentencing guidelines might handcuff the judge to a more severe sentence than truly deserved under the equitable facts (I’m using “equity” in an informal, rather than legal terminological sense here). My key contribution to the group was to inform them that it was within our unchallengeable rights as jurors to find him not guilty of some of the charges, and pare down our guilty verdict selectively to what seemed just (and would likely land the defendant a shorter rather than much longer prison sentence). And so we did. The experienced, respected judge didn’t bat so much an eye at us for what we’d done – I think he kinda figured out what we did and why.
We deliberated all morning, but reached a verdict by lunchtime. I would love to have been a fly on the wall at the federal prosecutor’s lunch.
Alison Rose 💙🌻💛
Not meaning to guilt anyone here, but an FYI that Robbie Coltrane was all in on defending JKR’s transphobia, so…there’s that.
bbleh
@trollhattan: I was voir-dire’d for a capital case in CA back when they still used it. I wrote on my questionnaire that I thought capital punishment was “state-sanctioned murder.” I got grilled for what felt like an hour, first by the prosecution and then by the judge himself, who ultimately said nope I won’t allow a challenge for cause (and actually explained why for the record), so the prosecutor had to use a peremptory. The defense attorney had a grin on her face a mile wide …
Kelly
Jet skis don’t bother me anymore than any other power boats and we’re gonna have power boats on most navigable waters. I am incensed by the assholes with the “wake boats” that are designed to to create a large destructive wake so people can surf the wake. Shore erosion, other boats and dock disruption be damned.
Antonius
@Betty Cracker: Modern Jet Skis are quieter. The late model ones on the lake are an order of magnitude quieter than the 70s-era beasts people pull out every now and then.
bbleh
@cmorenc: Every time I’ve served on a jury, I’ve been impressed by how seriously (almost) everyone has taken it, and how honest and forthright and civil the discussions were. It tempers my cynicism.
(That said, the approach of Friday afternoon definitely helps people resolve differences and find compromises.)
Layer8Problem
@Alison Rose 💙🌻💛: God-dammit.
trollhattan
@bbleh: It flabbergasts me this liberal hellhole nevertheless has a majority who favor the death penalty. We’re quirky that way, I guess.
dnfree
@Tom Levenson: The house we bought three years ago came with an LG refrigerator. When it developed a problem, we couldn’t find a single repair shop that would work on it. One woman went into a real rant about how hard they are to work on. Yet they’re still top-rated in Consumer Reports and elsewhere. Now we have a GE, which is working fine.
Omnes Omnibus
@bbleh: I know a judge who serves a lot of coffee at settlement conferences and then has very few comfort breaks. He tends to do this when a settlement should be close but one or both sides are being overly stubborn.
Matt McIrvin
@…now I try to be amused: The real problem here may be simply that the judge wants to legalize murder of Biden supporters and is trying to find a way.
MisterForkbeard
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
1) Trump Supporter + Qanon enthusiast
2) It’s Florida
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@Tony Jay: When you posted about Liz Truss a while ago (as she became PM), saying “she would get lost in an elevator”, I thought you were exaggerating! I should have known better,
Antonius
@Omnes Omnibus: I once served on a jury for a criminal assault trial of domestic violence, and had to raise my hand on a question of previous involvement in any similar incident to recount a story of camping out across a friend’s front door in case her crazy former boyfriend showed up, where my job would have been to get hit for a while as she called the police. None of that happened, but I thought it was relevant to the voir dire process. I told them I could be impartial, and I like to think I carried that out.
I got seated on the jury, and asked two questions of witnesses (jurors get to do that in Vermont, through the judge with both sides approving the questions before the judge questions the witness). We convicted after maybe 4 hours of discussion, and then afterwards the judge explained how this was a 3rd strike case for this defendant after other similar offenses. We put away a bad guy for a good reason, and I was happy I served.
Kropacetic
@A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan): Lis Truss, named for the action the British public will hopefully be ready to take against every Tory MP by the time she’s shown the door
MattF
Oh, and She-Hulk nailed the landing. I’d always wondered about Kevin.
Scout211
The only time I actually was called to jury duty (after decades of dismissals), I made it all the way to seat #7. After sitting in that jury room for the entire day, the defense booted me off because I have family members who are in the military and in law enforcement. I finally left the jury room at 4:50 pm after checking in at 8:00 am.
This was in November of 2020 and it appeared the defense was looking to claim excessive force by a CHP officer during an arrest for drunk driving by the defendant. The defense seemed to be trying to see if he could get jurors who questioned the accuracy of blood alcohol tests and also to see if there were jurors who believed that fighting an arresting officer could be okay in certain circumstances.
It wasn’t going well for the defense.
Geminid
Is the the honeymoon over? Today Politico Magazine put up an article titled, ” ‘He’s developing blinkers.’ Has Ron DeSantis let all the winning go to his head?”
This is a long article, as Politico Magazine articles tend to be.
WereBear
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Forget it, Jake. It’s Florida.
geg6
@Omnes Omnibus:
Ha! I would foil that guy completely. I never drink coffee after I brush my teeth in the morning. And I am known within my family as the “camel.” Because I can hold it forever, it seems.
Omnes Omnibus
@Matt McIrvin: Aside from your inherent pessimism, is there any reason you think that?
trollhattan
Speaking of authoritarian hellholes shooting themselves in the junk, Iran y’all.
The protests over the apparent murder of Masha Amini seem more widespread and persistent than anything the mullahs have faced since the revolution. May they bear fruit. (or bare fruit, just to mess with them further)
J R in WV
@Matt McIrvin:
Here we in theory have one trial and done jury duty, but they have a lot of trouble seating enough good jurors in our very rural county. So a couple of months after I was foreman on a murder trial in October (not guilty, self defense) they called and asked me to do another trial in December. As a state worker, I get paid the same, so volunteered.
When I found out what the trial was about, I was sure I would be booted in voir dire, was a shooting in my neighborhood, the deceased had visited the farm to talk about a down horse, in fact. Never mind, you’re OK. Right through Xmas holidays, which upset the women on the jury a lot.
They (fellow jurors) wanted me to be foreman, since I had done it once, I declined that honor, but still put my oar in the water when I thought it was necessary. We were 11-1 not guilty, reasonable doubt, until nearly midnight. One guy I learned much later had voted not guilty on a trial where he later on learned more about the defendant, and vowed to never vote not guilty again, ever. Which is the worst way to make a life altering decision like that.
Finally got him to see that reasonable doubt when you are the 1 on a 11-1 vote means you are being unreasonable.
Baud
@trollhattan:
As long as they were properly dressed, it’s all good.
trollhattan
@Geminid: Jayzus, what awful framing. DeSantis’ lone skill as far as I can see is being relentlessly sociopathic while miming being a governor. What “winning” is he winning all this time?
...now I try to be amused
@Matt McIrvin:
“For my friends, everything; for my enemies, the law.” — Óscar Benavides, onetime dictator of Peru. (That’s an earlier expression of Wilhoit’s Law.)
dww44
@MattF: you will love the third rack.
MattF
@trollhattan: I think the mullahs simply have no idea how to deal with women who flat-out refuse to follow their orders. Irresistible force is meeting immovable object.
Dorothy A. Winsor
I’ve only been called for jury duty once. I got chosen to be questioned, but before that happened, the case was settled. So that was it .
My son was on a grand jury. That took a month, but he didn’t have to go every day
Captain C
@Tony Jay:
TFG, the jet skier, or the just-sacked finance minister?
J R in WV
@The Moar You Know:
How about a shark phobia??
Although I believe barracuda are way more dangerous than sharks, in my experience diving in the Keys a hundred years ago.
Ken
@glc: I see Truss is using Johnson’s line, “determined to see through what I promised”. It makes me wonder, are there any other jobs where “I haven’t completed any of my work” is used as a reason to be kept on?
HumboldtBlue
Haven’t read the thread, but here’s more Pelosi.
cain
@glc: Better watch out, she’ll sack a quarterback next!
Tony Jay
@A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan):
It was an exaggeration.
Turns out she couldn’t even find the elevator.
Tony Jay
@Ken:
… porn actor?
matt
Any potential juror I would ask to consider their responsibility to the country when answering jury challenge questions.
Mousebumples
Picked for a jury once, in the jury room, waiting for the trial to start… And then called back to the courtroom to be told that the defendant decided to plead guilty.
Only took a few hours, but not too complicated.
Geminid
@trollhattan: The protests in Iran are nearing the end of their fourth week. In 2019, the regime crushed protests that broke out over price increases within days, killing 1000 by our State Department’s estimate, 1500 by Reuters’.
These demonstrations are different, much more widespread and intense. Recently oil workers have staged job actions, which may be an ominous sign for the regime. So far security forces have tried to arrest and beat their way out of their fix.
They are using live fire, but not yet on the scale of “Bloody November,” 2019. The crackdown in the western Kurdish region is more violent than elsewhere. Ms. Amini was Kurdish, and her brethren were incensed by her murder. The regime has always been especially repressive towards the Kurds.
Western media cannot report from inside Iran, and coverage has been sparce compared to the importance of this story. A lot of reporting and video still makes its way out of the country, though. One good source is Europe based Iran News Wire, and there are many others.
cain
@Geminid: Here’s looking that in the end womens’ rights is something that the Iranian govt will have to accept. Hopefully that will provoke women rights across the rest of the globe.
Burnspbesq
@Barney:
Any charges against Trump will be brought in DC, which is where the (alleged) offenses took place. That’s the right answer, although the relative lack of MAGAts in the population from which prospective jurors will be drawn is a nice bonus.
bbleh
@glc: @cain: She came from the side, though, so there was no chance of a camera catching a pic of any unmentionables.
HumboldtBlue
@Tony Jay:
Zombie porn actor (it’s not as bad as you think, the movies are, however)
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@Kropacetic: Good one :-)
Doug R
@Mr. Longform: Similar to what I’d say, but I don’t think I could hold it together on a jury looking at trump hisself.
Geminid
@cain: At this point, most of the protesters seem to believe that the government must be toppled. After 43 years, the Islamic Republic has only grown more repressive, and many Iranians believe it cannot be reformed.
ETtheLibrarian
As someone who lives in DC and would likely get called up for that one all I can say is UGH. And I am a librarian and we always get picked (though given where I work I might get booted).
bbleh
@Barney: @Burnspbesq: As noted elsewhere, “espionage” is (1) widely understood, (2) scaaaary bad, and (3) the sort of thing that will cause serious moral qualms among Republicans, including even some MAGAts. I would also think it would be among the easiest charges to prove, since (1) he HAD the documents, (2) long AFTER the subpoena, and (3) lack of contemporary classification status is no defense.
The obstruction one seems pretty open-and-closed to me too. Conversely, anything 1/6-related seems MUCH more difficult to prove.
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@bbleh: My jury experience over the years has been similar. People are generally reasonable and show a lot of common sense. On the first jury I was ever on (a long time ago – LA Law was on TV), I was struck by how real lawyers didn’t have writers giving them good lines LOL, and I did have to be the voice of reason in the jury room to start off with – most of the jurors wanted to convict a kid basically for living with an older woman (scandal in a small town) , which wasn’t what he was charged with. We eventually acquitted him.
My most recent jury duty, last year, was for a bad guy who was being railroaded by the DA in order to get him out of town. We sympathized with the sentiment (he was a child molester), but you can’t railroad people on BS charges, so he was acquitted.
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@trollhattan: I don’t generally support the death penalty, but that guy who shot 17 people in Parkland should be put down as you would a rabid dog. I don’t care how terrible his background was.
geg6
So I just read that Senate Majority PAC is running ads in Philly this weekend during the Eagles/Cowboys game highlighting Oz’s puppy killing. Also during Game 2 of the Phillies/Braves series on Wednesday. After that, they have spent millions to air them statewide. With all the bullshit Oz is spewing in his ads, this will, I’m sure, break through the noise.
HumboldtBlue
Meet the Flynnstones!
narya
@dnfree: do not get me started. The gasket on my 2-year-old LG is split lengthwise, and the magnet for the light turnoff went wonky. The former I haven’t fixed yet, and we managed to get the latter to work by using a strong-enough magnet on the OUTSIDE of the fridge. And the repair department was horrible. I will not buy an LG appliance again.
coin operated
@The Moar You Know:
You are not alone in this belief.
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@Tony Jay: I love reading your political dispatches from the UK. Misery loves company, I guess, seeing another country whose politics have gotten really fucked up.
I’ve recently developed a guilty pleasure in reading about the British royal family, kicked into high gear by the death of the queen. My main question: did Meghan Markle really not understand what the life of a senior royal is like (endless ribbon cuttings etc) before she married, or was she always just going to take the title and run? And did she talk Harry into it, or was he already looking for a way out and she was the answer to his prayer?
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@Mousebumples: I’ve heard that happens a lot – a defendant doesn’t want to make a deal and opts for a trial, only to lose their nerve on the day the trial is actually supposed to start (when it gets real, I guess).
cintibud
@Martin: Wait a second, you were almost fired because the judge removed you from the jury pool? I must be not understanding correctly
cintibud
I was called to jury duty about 25 years ago for a capital murder case. The judge asked who was opposed to the death penalty and I raised my hand, along with a number of other potential jurors. We were then all dismissed by the judge.
Kropacetic
@cintibud: Seems to me that judge’s biases could use some examination.
Omnes Omnibus
@cintibud: Death qualification, as it is called, ensures a pro-prosecution tendency in capital juries.
Kropacetic: It isn’t the judge.
Kropacetic
As you explained here.
Yeesh. Gotta love those baked-in systemic issues.
cintibud
@Kropacetic: I think it was standard procedure at the time. As Omnes noted, definitely gives the prosecution a big advantage.
The guy was found guilty and given the death penalty. I believe he’s finally coming up for execution if I got the name right.
M31
@A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan):
that happened to me once– called for a trial, then the (drunk driving case) defendant came in, saw the room full of completely normal people who were going to be the jurors, and went from defiant to pleading guilty and we all got to go home. (the judge came in afterwards and thanked us all and told us what happened, sounds like it’s not uncommon)
Tony Jay
@A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan):
Gawd knows. I’m not exactly the biggest fan of the winners of Britain’s feudal lottery, so I don’t really follow their dramas.
I’ll say one thing about Meghan Markle though. All the ‘right’ people treated her like a piece of shit, so I’m willing to take her at her word when she says The Firm were ghastly to her.
She said the Ginger One are well better out of it and living around genuine human beings.
trollhattan
@Mousebumples:
Related, I was at the courthouse to testify against our burglar and was called into the DA’s office, along with the other witnesses, where we were told the defendant had copped a plea and would be going to prison for a good long while, because he was a three-striker.
It was a satisfying outcome and I didn’t have the experience of facing him in court and reliving that day. (I had seen his mugshots and impressed myself that my description had been spot on. Television has us thinking otherwise.)
geg6
@J R in WV:
In my experience as a diver also.
cintibud
@M31: Same for me the last time I was called in. We were called out into the hall waiting for the bailiff to escort us to the courtroom. We waited in the hall for 30 min, shuffling from one foot to the other when the bailiff finally came back and said the guy pleaded, you can all go home!
JPL
@trollhattan: good
Matt McIrvin
@cintibud: I think he was almost fired because of a situation similar to the case under consideration when he went for voir dire.
kalakal
@Amir Khalid: Rats. I’ve been a fan since A Kick Up the Eighties. I loved Tutti Frutti
Matt McIrvin
@Omnes Omnibus: Is it really believable that it would be impossible to find a jury capable, regardless of political tendencies, of making a reasonably unbiased judgment in this egregious case, unless the judge is trying really hard to define “reasonably unbiased” impossibly high (e.g. “has never heard of Donald Trump”)?
Matt McIrvin
@M31: My impression is that that is so common it’s more the rule than the exception–they try really hard to get the defendant to plead guilty to something, and very often it’s the empaneling of a jury that puts them over the edge and produces a plea.
And whether that amounts to justice, I’m not at all sure.
geg6
@A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan):
I think that’s kind of unfair to Markle. She fell in love with this guy who is in a very weird situation. I’m sure she knew it was going to be a lot of stupid shit like cutting ribbons and such and was prepared to do that. But between the disgusting British media and her awful SIL, she was beaten down quite a lot. I think Harry saw a similar thing happening to her as happened to his mother and he said fuck it, let’s see if we can get out of this. I think they tried to find a way to stay in the family but no one would let them have an ounce of independence within the royalty. So they both said fuck it and got the hell out. I admire the hell out of both of them for it. I have no admiration for the rest of the Windsors and that nasty package William is married to I despise.
Omnes Omnibus
@Matt McIrvin: I didn’t hear the full voir dire. If the person effectively says that they are unable to make rational decisions about the subject (whatever it is), they can’t be on a jury involving that subject.
Geminid
@Geminid: I also find good reporting on the protests in Iran tbrough Laura Rosen’s Twitter account, @lrosen (I found hers through Cheryl Rofer’s). Rosen’s beat is national security, but she links to Iran reports and she seems like a discriminating person.
Rosen also links to her own longer writing. She just wrote a piece on US/Saudi relations in light of the Saudi’s recent curtailment of oil production.
raven
@MattF: We have a Bosch hybrid HVAC, gas furnace and heat pump. It’s awesome. My doctorate never kept me off a jury but the last one I was on they did a group interview. They asked if anyone had even been in a “physical confrontation”! I raised my hand and they asked “could you describe IT”! I laughed and said “How much time do you have”. I was dismissed.
Ruckus
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
A real man can never be without his penis extender.
Especially one that really needs one.
Matt McIrvin
@Omnes Omnibus: Maybe I’m overgeneralizing from my experiences with Massachusetts jury service–I was imagining a situation where they had a room with, like, 100 or 200 people in it, and of all of them, they couldn’t find 9 plus a couple of alternates who could be adequately impartial.
HumboldtBlue
@A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan):
I’ve seen it happen at least a dozen times in person, and in each instance it was for a very serious charge. Not uncommon at all.
Omnes Omnibus
@Matt McIrvin: People make a lot of judgments from snippets of legal proceedings. Lots of those judgment are wrong.
Ruckus
@trollhattan:
I was an alternate on a jury once and being an alternate meant that when the jury was sequestered I was done, although I had to hang around till they delivered their decision, just in case. I recall it took about an hour.
The second time I was called up to serve on a first degree murder case that the guy coped to a day before the trial was to start.
Other than that I’ve just sat in the jury room for, if I remember correctly, 3 days and never got called. That was over 4 years ago.
Baud
DOJ has filed its opening brief in the 11th Circuit.
Cameron
“And the jury foreman turned away from the judge, he turned towards me and he said ‘Sir’ – he had tears in his eyes – ‘Sir, we find you guilty on all counts.’ Bigly!”
Sure Lurkalot
Re jury duty. I was in the last group about to be dismissed when a case remained unsettled. I was the last of 100 names called into a hall and then the first of 30 called for qualification.
The case was brought by a young women claiming disability from an auto accident a few years earlier, defendant was the driver and Allstate his insurer. Though I answered questions stating I thought it difficult to determine set monetary award amounts for pain and suffering as well as that I thought insurance companies tended to avoid paying claims as a general business practice, I was chosen and then my peers chose me to be foreman.
The woman had the worst attorney ever, painting her as one whose life was one hard knock after another…abuse, abandonment, then the accident. She did herself no favors by wearing tall platform shoes every day seemingly defying her claim of unbearable back injury. The jury was very unsympathetic…some didn’t believe she was in any horrible pain at all and even given that, everyone agreed that many aspects of her sad life likely contributed to her pain and suffering.
No one wanted to award any damages at all but I convinced the other 11 that we were talking about Allstate and let’s at least cover her costs. So, the defendant got off, the Allstate guy was so happy about the rather minimal award that he stayed to thank us. And the judge called us into chambers as well to thank us and said we deliberated well.
Omnes Omnibus
@Baud: Woohoo!
Roger Moore
@Tom Levenson:
I have mixed feelings about my Bosch. It cleans dishes very well, and I like that it has a water softener, which is good given the very hard water around here. But the heater element failed, the repair was a PITA, and it hasn’t been quite the same ever since.
Steeplejack
(Video.)
Juju
@patrick II: As you know, the only thing that stops a bad guy on a jet ski with a gun is a good guy on a jet ski with a gun.
JML
I made it to Voir Dire once for federal grand jury duty. the judge seated us and began interrogating everyone, with mostly benign questions until he got to me and started in with “I see you went to law school.” My response was “Yes, sir. I believe Your Honor gave our commencement address,” and he answered “Yes, I did. Do you recall what it was about?”
Things went downhill for me at this point. :P
Martin
@cintibud: No, there was an incident at work where I was sounding the alarm on a student that had a history of stalking another student and had taken a recent interest in acquiring a gun. I pushed the administration a lot harder than they wanted to be pushed. I was informed one Friday that I was to have a meeting Monday morning with the people whose presence would be needed to fire me, but over the weekend the police picked up the student in the bushes outside of the home of a relative of the student being stalked, and the gun discharged (nobody hurt). Because of that incident, I went from overreacting pain in the ass possibly infringing on the rights of a student, to guy who knew what was up and would have prevented a murder of a different student if the circumstances would have gone a bit differently. That Monday meeting was changed to a different set of people where I was updated and praised in a VERY awkward way. This led to a series of administrative changes related to how information is shared, how threats are assessed, how we balance student rights, and so on.
The trial in question was a guy who knew about another guy who went off to do a robbery, also knew he owned a gun, and was on trial for being an accomplice to a homicide because he should have anticipated he’d bring the gun to the burglary. They don’t reveal most details of a case in the summary, so I’m sure there’s a ton of details that make that look more like a criminal case, but based on what they told the jury, I was a guy who knew a student with a gun, who knew the student had a history of stalking, and was nearly fired for doing too much to try and intervene, and whose job was saved because we didn’t intervene, and just by happenstance also didn’t cause someone to get hurt. Had the student gotten hurt, I’d almost certainly have been made a scapegoat – but the whistleblower complaint I filed the week before probably would have saved me on that?
My issue is the conflicting signaling between how we morally evaluate these situations, how we process these moral conflicts through an administration, how policy around this gets set, and how it gets implemented. And how administrations deliberately build gaps to ensure they don’t know information they don’t want to deal with, but can punish people for failing to inform authorities because they fall into those by-design gaps. Police have loads of these, as do areas like CPS, mental health services, drug treatment, etc. Some of these are more by-design gaps than actual services.
Everyone is getting a taste of this with the Dobbs decision. You can see the administrative black holes being created because ectopic pregnancies are difficult to fit into the framework they want, so it sits in this nowhere space between care provider responsibilities and what the law permits. That is not shortsightedness, it’s by design.
Did that defendant fall into such a gap? I couldn’t tell by the summary, but I spend a lot of mental energy on that gap, where most people don’t.
trollhattan
Oh man! “Here’s twenty feet of rope. Let’s see what you can do with it.”
Geminid
@Juju: The guy may have done his own research, and discovered the deadly danger of “Murder Manatees”!
Ruckus
@Omnes Omnibus:
I’d bet a lot of people haven’t served upon a jury and have never been through the system to get there.
Two of the three times I served or was called up I was in a county in CA that had about 250K inhabitants. Quite a few of them out of that 250K likely wouldn’t be able to serve so people acceptable got called often, and in fact at one point, the third time I was called, I had to ask to be excused because of business. At that time to do that you had to go before a judge, not the clerk, and explain why your excuse should be granted. There must have been 25 of us in that courtroom.
trollhattan
@Geminid: Heh.
“You’re just in the pocket of Big Manatee.”
Cameron
@Juju: And in Florida you’re allowed to stand your ground on a jet ski.
Roger Moore
@Omnes Omnibus:
I think the main thing is that most people don’t make it onto the jury. The jury pool is always huge compared to the number of people on the jury, so each person is very unlikely to make it on the jury. People are self-centered, so rather than seeing it as a matter of the odds, they identify something about themselves that convinced one of the lawyers to kick them off.
Roger Moore
@Martin:
I would take it a step further. One of the reasons I despise Trump is because he tried to make the legal system all about which side you were on politically rather than whether or not you had done what you were accused of.
Geminid
@trollhattan: I don’t think the manatees have broken bad. Yet. But if they ever do, I can see them going after jet ski riders. They’re vegetarians, but they might form an alliance with sharks. I don’t think anyone, human or animal, likes jet ski riders except jet ski riders.
Roger Moore
@The Moar You Know:
That won’t necessarily get you off a jury. My brother was on a jury after he said he thought the police lie. The prosecutor told them after the trial that they weren’t worried about that because the didn’t think the trial hinged on the honesty of the police; the really important testimony came from other witnesses. It sounds like it was a relatively open-and-shut case, and the defense was mostly hoping for some jurors who would feel sorry for the defendant and take it easy on him because he was placed in an impossible situation. The prosecutors wanted people who were logical and would apply the law no matter how they felt personally. My brother fit both criteria, so he voted to convict even though he felt sorry for the defendant.
Princess
What percentage of citizens didn’t even bother to vote for President in 2020? Whatever their feelings were about Trump pro or con, they weren’t even strong enough to get them to a ballot box. I’m sure there are enough of them for a jury.
KenK
@MattF: Yeah, I’ve also been voir dired out. Seems that the investigating detectives were part of my regular Saturday morning foursome…
Juju
@Cameron: I see what you did there, and I almost spit coffee on my phone.
Ruckus
@trollhattan:
I think a lot of people reflexively say yes to the death penalty. An eye for an eye I believe is the point. And with our population in CA we’ve had a few murders that even someone squeamish might think, “Damn that guy deserves to be hung at high noon in the square in front of the courthouse, till there is zero doubt, and then hung again just for good measure.” Many of us don’t agree with that but still I can see and understand the concept. Personally, I think that life without parole is actually a better deterrent. I’ve said here before that I know someone who has been in jail for over 50 yrs for murder, in CA with parole a possibility and she’s still in jail.