Reply to DC criminal code overhaul is ghastly

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Any person facing potential jail time SHOULD be able to demand a jury trial.

This proposed law is not the problem; putting people in jail for up to a year for minor offenses is the real problem.

The US incarcerates a higher percentage of its population than any other country in the world.

Jailing people for minor offenses is expensive to taxpayers and dangerous for the individuals placed in jail or prison.

Poor people go to jail for misdemeanors. This is wrong & unfair. We need better ways to handle minor offenses.[/quote]

I would have agreed with this until I served on a jury. Now I think we're looking at it from the wrong angle.

Jury trials are incredibly cumbersome for everyone involved. Just the process of jury selection is a huge PITA. It's totally worth it as a (constitutionally mandated) form of justice, but wow is it hard to do. And the shorter the trial and the lesser the infraction, the less worth it it is from a systems standpoint.

While I agree with you in theory because it's sort of ridiculous you could go to jail for a year without being entitled to a jury trial, in reality the thought of serving on juries for minor infractions like loitering or public drunkenness is INSANE. I can't even explain to you how much of a waste of time that would feel like for everyone involved. You'd have to impanel a jury (which by itself takes a minus of a couple hours and requires the courts to issue a ton of jury summons just to get enough people available for the juries needed), and call witnesses, which in the case of most misdemeanors is going to wind up just being the arresting officer and maybe one other person (whose time is also valuable -- do you want to go testify in court every time a fight breaks out in front of your business or you witness someone getting on a bus without paying?). The defendant, whose testimony would actually be helpful, probably won't testify because standard practice is to discourage defendants for testifying and they are constitutionally protected from having to do so. Witness testimony will take an hour though, even though you're only hearing from a couple people, because the process of bringing the witnesses in, swearing them in, and going through the often technical aspects of the testimony (like having to ask the arresting officer a specific set of carefully phrased questions in order to formally introduce the arrest report into evidence) is cumbersome as well.

Then the jury has to deliberate. Even if most juries in these cases will just take one vote, they will wind up talking about the case for at least a few minutes.

Point is, even a fairly simple trial for a minor infraction is going to take up most of a full day and will require the efforts of around 20 people, minimum (jury, judge, attorneys, clerks, witnesses, defendant). Plus think of how much time beat cops will wind up having to spend in court for this -- do you really want to be employing police who spend 50-60% of their time testifying in court? Is that their main job?

I don't know what the answer is. Some of these charges are BS (loitering is a ridiculous thing to lock someone up for, and probably shouldn't be a crime at all) and yes, sometimes the punishments don't make sense. But I think the key then is to address the punishments and figure out something more fair and appropriate, including leaning more heavily on probation and community service. I do NOT want to serving on a jury for misdemeanors every other year, and I also don't think the court system can handle the back up this would cause. It would also cause major delays on jury trials for stuff like murder, where actually all the hassle of a trial is worth it because you're talking about justice for the victim and their family and the potential for the defendant to go to prison for many years. Imagine if all murder trials were delayed a couple years because the court system was so busy trying people for not throwing their trash in the trash can.[/quote]

Combine the sheer laboriousness of jury trials with our ban on cash bail and the fact that most crimes are committed by a small group of recidivists and you have the makings of something really ugly. [/quote]

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