That’s pretty well clarified : )
I’ve run out of likes for today : (
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This.
Per the BBC documentary on capital punishment in Great Britain, and paraphrased.
[quote]When the crime of rape carried the possibility of a sentence of death, it was almost impossible to get a conviction. Not necessarily because the jury didn’t believe that a rape had occurred, but because they were reluctant to send a man to the gallows for it.
When the death penalty ceased to apply to rape, conviction rates skyrocketed.[/quote]
My take away from that: Less killing = more justice.
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Apparently asking about nullification during selection is a good way to get out of jury duty 
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I’ll admit my thinking has changed in the recent past due to arguments made here and elsewhere (that is, that the death penalty is wrong), and I’d wholeheartedly recommend the book Gideon’s Trumpet to underline the difficulties in building and maintaining a strong public defender corps.
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There’s no investigation into or vetting of a potential juror’s answers. They’re not formally under oath. I was voir dired last year on what surely would have been a high-profile capital murder case, were the death penalty not under moratorium at the time. (Currently it (the death penalty) is awaiting an appeal of a state decision ruling it unconstitutional.)
The voir dire process seemed to be largely geared towards demographics, with some repetitive questions about understanding basic legal ideas that were more aimed at drumming them into all the potential jurors’ heads than eliciting any information. The defense did its best to weed out the retired cop types, the prosecution tried to weed out hippie types. I’m obviously greatly oversimplifying the depth of demographic complexity involved, but that was the basic idea.
(I wasn’t empaneled, but the defendant wound up getting life without parole according to the news.)
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That is good to hear.
Good to hear that. Incidentally, “life without parole” is another punishment that is considered “inhuman and degrading” by the European Court of Human Rights. But that is a different story. Let’s take one step at a time.
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