A_News_Junkie
Retired
- Joined
- Dec 30, 2009
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for the Judge to impose the DP. At least in some other states, the jury imposes DP by something less than unanimity. This is an unfortunate poster case for why that is a bad thing. One person should not be able to derail a proceeding, especially when judges refuse to act when notified by 11 jurors that the 12th is refusing to deliberate. A perfect storm of bad. Kind of par for the course for this trial. As I think I said in another post to KCL, at least we can take good advantage of having such a good bad poster case to attract attention. The millions wasted, the bad judicial oversight, the dishonest juror, the failure to intervene when the jury cries out for help, it's all so bad it may end up doing good.
I would also note that I think only about 3 states permit less than majority and I think that a move to majority came after the same Ring v AZ case that found the Judge decision unconstitutional. Two states have simple majority and one has super majority 10-2. I think maybe simple majority too subject to criticism but some kind of super majority seems constitutionally fair.
Had the issue of perjury of the jury been discovered after deliberations started - could the judge have removed the juror and placed an alternate? Or if any anti- death penalty documents (that might or might not exist) or communications by a sitting juror been revealed -- would this still have resulted in a mistrial?