Natwerk Designs

Would you support this jury innovation?

Hello, I am a law enforcement professional with over 20 years of experience. My colleagues and I have proposed a new system to our state congress and I think it offers several improvements to our criminal justice system. We've all read the headlines. Victims and their families can't sleep in their beds because slick lawyers and misled juries regularly botch the law in cases where dangerous defendants stand trial. Our innovation, the "police jury system" (not to be confused with louisiana's governmental system) will do away with this. As officers, your policemen pledge to protect and serve our nation's communities. we can fulfill that duty by comprising the exclusive pool of potential jurors in state criminal trials. The risk of impropriety is minimal as we have already sworn to uphold the law. A concerned defendant could rebut this preemption with evidence beyond reasonable doubt that a police juror is unfit to judge a particular case. Testifying officers would not serve either. In addition to providing police jobs for the citizens of our state, this would alsopromote economic growth by exempting the men of our stste from jury service so they can continue their jobs and so women can stay home with their children and families. Also, the public could rest assured that only decisionmakers will try criminal cases. No federal constitutional rights are implicated because this is a state court so only state constitutional procedural rights to a jury trial will apply. We are also thinking of extending this system to civil cases to promote tort reform if it proves successful in criminal justice. Would you support this great new innovation?

Public Comments

1. can it get me off a possesion charge?
2. I think it's worth trying. Any change would be an improvement over the current system. I can't help but wonder how many cases have been affected because jurors were resentful over having to serve.
3. A consensus of the people do not get around, nor change, the Constitution. Your notion that having police act as jurors not impeding one's Constitutional rights is false. With all due respect, Officer, how many times do you see someone riding in the back of a police car and wonder what they did to get arrested, or say to yourself, Can't find out the skinny on that guy? Those thoughts by themselves defeat the Constitional right to presumption of innocense. If your first thought is someone is guilty merely because they've been arrested, then you have a natural bias towards guilt, which precludes you from being a juror. Further, your bias is blaring in sa simple statement that you make: PROMOTE tort reform. If you are wanting to PROMOTE something, that means you are for it. If you are for it, you have a bias towards it. Again, not someone who would be allowed to sit in judgment of a doctor accused of failing to follow the standard of care sufficiently enough to cause permanent damage, which is the ONLY reason a doctor can be accused. Docs do not get sued for doing all they can and getting a bad outcome, nor do they get sued when they make a mistake that someone recovers from. They ONLY get sued when they have failed in their duties to their patients to the point that that patient is permanently, life-alteringly injured. And if that patient dies, there is no lawsuit. Tort reform already stops you from suing for the death of a loved one due to a medical mistake, Officer. Those deaths are deemed "non-economic damages" and are unrecoverable under the law. Let me float this past you, Officer. 93,000 people DIED last year of medical mistakes. These aren't people who were too sick or too injured to recover. These are people whose doctors failed to follow the standard of care so completely as to cause their deaths. Like my friend whose baby was born stillborn because the doctors refused to do a C-Section, even though all the medical textbooks mandated that it be done because of her current condition. And I will tell you again, since it's clear you don't know this, that Amendment 7 states that only juries are to make awards, not judges, and not legislators. Legislators can be bought, and they are bought, huge donations coming from lobbyists to re-election campaigns in trade for a vote, a vote that keeps the $100 billion a year in profits -- PROFITS, Officer, AFTER all costs are paid, including lawsuits -- are paid out. Let me give you one other piece of information to chew on while you're busy "promoting tort reform." In 2005 the largest hospital system in America commissioned a study to prove that tort reform keeps medical care costs low. What the study found instead was that medical premiums rise higher, faster in states with caps versus states that don't have caps. Indeed, CA passed tort reform 30 years ago. Blue Cross raised its rates 39% last year and an additional 40% this year. At last reading, TX' premiums have raised 40% since tort reform was passed, with NO lawsuits being filed. Tell the man who was paralyzed from the waist down that you are for tort reform. He was paralyzed becaue his doc used a drug in surgery with a black box warning, Lovenox. Lovenox cannot be used in back surgery. Know why? It can cause paralysis. That doctor is not held accountable, and the man is enrolled into Medicaid. His medical bills do not go away. But now instead of an insurance company paying for his bills, YOU get to pay for his medical bills through taxes. So much for promoting tort reform.