Over the last few days a client and I had a falling out over how the case should proceed, so sadly I had to tell him he needed he a new attorney. I say sadly because I had his case in good shape, and I doubt he'll find another attorney to take it over, and probably won't be able to make it pro-per.
I noticed in this particular client, his refusal to accept legal reality is he feels that certain parties (large banks) have wronged him in such a way and ruined his life, to settle with them is somehow capitulating.
In my termination email to him, I told him he still had his health and his family so he couldn't say everything was gone, but that didn't work.
This made me think of some of the horrible events of recent history some of my clients have lived through - things that can really ruin life, far worse than a foreclosure or a few crooked banks. So here are some:
-jewish clients living in Ukraine in 1941
-client who does not have a birth certificate because his village was destroyed by the French Army and later served in the South Vietnamese Army and barely made it out after we bailed in 1975
-client who lived through this in Argentina and served in this conflict
-clients who were born in Burma and are of this ethnicity;
-clients born in 1970 in this country;
There are more - my point is, it could be a lot worse.
Monday, July 15, 2013
Friday, July 12, 2013
Jurors Are Not Capable of Performing their Alleged Most Important Task - Part 1
I have a confession to make. I have never laid eyes on a jury in real life. Not as an observer, nor in practice. I've never been on a jury and probably never will be. And I don't feel like I am missing out. So the rest of what follows might all be a bunch of shit I made up...(I don't think it is)
Our legal system loves juries. There are epic poems thinly disguised as legal scholarship or judicial opinions talking about the sanctity of the jury, the province of the jury, the deference to the jury, and how amazingly awesome it is for an impartial panel of your fellow citizens to decide whether you really meant to give the car back that you drove away in or whether you really didn't see that puddle of piss that you slipped on in the Appelbees men's room.
The jury decides facts (judges decide law). During a trial (again remember I have never actually seen one) evidence is presented, lawyers argue, and then the jury has to decide what really happened and whether what really happened constitutes a crime or civil liability.
It goes without saying that prosecution and defense and plaintiff and defense have very different views as to what really happened. It could be a matter of perspective, bias, or outright lies. When there is a situation where witness A says A happened and witness B says B happened, the jury gets to determine who is telling the truth, or how as it is called in legal-speak, determine credibility.
Generally speaking, juries are neither qualified nor capable of performing this task. There are two obvious reasons for this. First, most people (or most stupid people or 95% of the people on juries) think they can perceive that someone is lying by their demeanor such as whether a person is sweating, stuttering, crying too much, not crying enough, blinking their eyes too much, shifting in their chair, speaking too softly, speaking too loudly etc...
Some of these traits might be indicative of lying. If a jury can figure it out, then those jurors should be playing professional poker (incidentally pro pokers players do not use these types of cues to determine what their opponent may hold). Therefore, unless a juror can demonstrate he or she has in fact won a large sum of money playing poker, it must be concluded said juror is unable to use these sorts of cues to determine whether one is telling the truth or not. Further, because many people think they can figure it out, there should be a jury instruction which reads:
"You and 99.9% of all humans lack the ability to observe the demeanor of a person you have never met before and determine with any sort of certainty from this whether that person is testifying truthfully. This includes **list of all conventional wisdom observations**. If you already know this, you are probably the smartest person on this jury. Please try to convince your fellows jurors of this fact. They probably won't listen because of stuff like "my ex-wife always was sweating when I asked her Jim was", but you should try."
Second is summed up in three words: Rules of Evidence. It shouldn't take fancy terms like hearsay and personal knowledge to explain why what Billy said to Jimmy which was overheard by Jimmy Lee who then testified that Billy had seen some guy who sort of looked like the defendant steal the missionaries bicycle for one to realize this type of evidence is really useless.
Nor should it take much thought for someone to determine that it isn't science when a witness is paid by that party to perform an experiment where the answer is pre-determined.
The whole point of the rules of evidence is to keep information away from people who are too dumb to figure out the obvious.
But, Matt, this is a panel of your peers, an impartial group of people just like you - they'll get justice for you.....next part will talk about this.
Our legal system loves juries. There are epic poems thinly disguised as legal scholarship or judicial opinions talking about the sanctity of the jury, the province of the jury, the deference to the jury, and how amazingly awesome it is for an impartial panel of your fellow citizens to decide whether you really meant to give the car back that you drove away in or whether you really didn't see that puddle of piss that you slipped on in the Appelbees men's room.
The jury decides facts (judges decide law). During a trial (again remember I have never actually seen one) evidence is presented, lawyers argue, and then the jury has to decide what really happened and whether what really happened constitutes a crime or civil liability.
It goes without saying that prosecution and defense and plaintiff and defense have very different views as to what really happened. It could be a matter of perspective, bias, or outright lies. When there is a situation where witness A says A happened and witness B says B happened, the jury gets to determine who is telling the truth, or how as it is called in legal-speak, determine credibility.
Generally speaking, juries are neither qualified nor capable of performing this task. There are two obvious reasons for this. First, most people (or most stupid people or 95% of the people on juries) think they can perceive that someone is lying by their demeanor such as whether a person is sweating, stuttering, crying too much, not crying enough, blinking their eyes too much, shifting in their chair, speaking too softly, speaking too loudly etc...
Some of these traits might be indicative of lying. If a jury can figure it out, then those jurors should be playing professional poker (incidentally pro pokers players do not use these types of cues to determine what their opponent may hold). Therefore, unless a juror can demonstrate he or she has in fact won a large sum of money playing poker, it must be concluded said juror is unable to use these sorts of cues to determine whether one is telling the truth or not. Further, because many people think they can figure it out, there should be a jury instruction which reads:
"You and 99.9% of all humans lack the ability to observe the demeanor of a person you have never met before and determine with any sort of certainty from this whether that person is testifying truthfully. This includes **list of all conventional wisdom observations**. If you already know this, you are probably the smartest person on this jury. Please try to convince your fellows jurors of this fact. They probably won't listen because of stuff like "my ex-wife always was sweating when I asked her Jim was", but you should try."
Second is summed up in three words: Rules of Evidence. It shouldn't take fancy terms like hearsay and personal knowledge to explain why what Billy said to Jimmy which was overheard by Jimmy Lee who then testified that Billy had seen some guy who sort of looked like the defendant steal the missionaries bicycle for one to realize this type of evidence is really useless.
Nor should it take much thought for someone to determine that it isn't science when a witness is paid by that party to perform an experiment where the answer is pre-determined.
The whole point of the rules of evidence is to keep information away from people who are too dumb to figure out the obvious.
But, Matt, this is a panel of your peers, an impartial group of people just like you - they'll get justice for you.....next part will talk about this.
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