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The Myth of Impartial Jurors

By Michael Blankenship

The death penalty trial of a West Philadelphia man - accused of killing two people and wounding a third in the bloody 2006 takeover of a crack cocaine ring in the Northeast - collapsed in mistrial this morning after the judge learned jurors began deliberating before the trial ended. Read more...  In 1976, the U.S. Supreme Court approved the process of a bifurcated trial in capital cases. There was no evidence that this process was an improvement, but it was adopted nonetheless.  Recent research now shows how naive the Court was in accepting the bifurcated process. As this incident shows, jurors don't wait until the appropriate time to deliberate or to make up their minds about guilt or innocence. The first phase, known as the guilt phase, is ostensibly reserved for listening to the evidence and then deliberating about guilt...continue to full post

Full post as published by The Justice Gambit on March 21, 2010 (boomark / email).