a-method-in-it:

3fluffies:

anarchonecromancy:

hexpress:

gwyoi:

ty for stealing this one much appreciated

people in the notes suggesting it was “improper” for the juror to do this or that it “introduced bias” to the court proceeding 🙄 the ice agent in question accused a moc of assaulting him / resisting arrest. how is the agent being a white supremacist not relevant. what universe are you living in

Juror fined $11,227 after googling ICE officer's peculiar uniform patch | Boing Boing

A juror was held in criminal contempt and fined more than $11k for researching his case online. The man, named as Stephen Miele, told other

Boing Boing

As a member of the world’s SECOND oldest profession, I assure you this is just one of many ways the justice system is systematically fucked up.

For anyone who wants to know how to fact check something you are told while on jury duty without getting fined:

First, you need to understand that the rule that jurors can’t just google things is coming from a good place. Like imagine that you are on a jury that’s considering, say, a medical malpractice lawsuit and one of your fellow jurors comes into the jury room and says to you, “I think the victim’s expert was lying because WebMD totally contradicts everything they said.”

And you might be like, “But WebMD is notoriously unreliable website and the expert you’re talking about is a researcher from Mayo Clinic.” But this person cannot be swayed.

Like, we can all agree that would be bad.

So even though these rules can contribute to unjust outcomes as in the case above (and seriously, the fact that the defense attorney didn’t fact check that is probably grounds for legal malpractice), they also prevent jurors from just looking up bullshit online and taking it more seriously than the actual experts the court has put on. And I think in the era of anti-vaxxers/QAnon/COVID denial/etc., we can all understand why it’s a bad idea to trust that people can tell fact from bullshit online.

So in light of this, how do you as a juror fact check something?

The key here is that you have to ask the court for information. Jurors can ask questions of the court during deliberations, so if something you said sounds off to you, you can ask for more information.

The key term you want to use here is “credibility.”

The job of a jury is to decide what are called “questions of fact.” Long before the trial even starts, lawyers will have hashed out all the “questions of law” — like, what the statute of limitations is; what laws, exactly, were allegedly broken; whether the court you’re in even has jurisdiction; stuff like that. Jurors are responsible for deciding which side’s version of the facts has more credibility.

For instance, if the prosecution’s witness says X and the defense’s witness says Y, the jury is responsible for deciding which is true, X or Y. And you do this by weighing which one is more credible.

So in this case, if the juror had known to, he could have told the judge, “In order to properly assess the ICE agent’s credibility, I need more information about his tattoo. I have doubts about whether he was telling the truth about it, which would impact how credible I would find his testimony. Can the agent please provide evidence that it really is what he says it is?”

There are a lot of problems with our legal system, and I think one of the biggest is that jurors aren’t educated about what they can and can’t do. Juries have a lot of power, if (and only if) they know how to use it.

death2america:

prole-log:

me making conversation at family events

kinstein-art:

lmao have fun in the multiverse of madness doc

compassionatereminders:

Normalize disliking people and avoiding them without starting a conflict and insisting that they’re bad people. You don’t actually need to be able to call someone toxic and abusive in order to justify that you’re not vibing with them.

zipperbunny:

copperbadge:

obstinaterixatrix:

tinsnip:

When we’re new to adulthood, it doesn’t immediately occur to all of us that you’re almost always allowed to leave a situation, because growing up we’re forced to stay in situations until someone dismisses us and/or takes us home, or if we do leave on our own accord there’s someone waiting at home to say “we don’t quit in this family!” Boring party? You can leave. You don’t like the lecture? You can walk out. New doctor not working out? You can end the appointment, you don’t need to wait for them to dismiss you. Bad date? You can just go home. Leaving a situation prematurely might have consequences, but unless you’re under arrest or serving prison time, it’s pretty much always allowed.

–commenter Allison @ askamanager

A while back, I called for a Lyft ride home from the airport. The lyft pulled up, he called my name, and I opened the door and climbed in. While I was climbing in he was getting out, which I didn’t realize until he opened the back door on the other side.

Him: I’ll put your bag in the trunk.
Me: Oh, there’s no need. 
Him: I’ll just put it back there. 
Me: I prefer to keep my bag with me.

I was also still holding onto it so he couldn’t just grab it, and when I said “I prefer to keep it with me” this cloud of rage crossed his face.

Him: Then get out. 
Me: Excuse me?
Him: Get out, I don’t want your bag fucking up my upholstery.

Now, this was a weekender – essentially an upscale duffle bag. Small, almost brand new, easily fitting on the middle-seat beside me. I don’t know if he was just really intense about his upholstery or if he was running some kind of scam, but either way I now DEFINITELY was not going to let him separate me from my bag.

So I said “Okay,” and I picked up my bag and got out, took out my phone, and cancelled him as my driver.

He looked at me like I’d grown a second head. There was this moment of total disconnect in his face, and then he started ranting about how someone had damaged his upholstery and they needed to put their bags in the back and he wasn’t going to have me getting his upholstery dirty. 

I said, “I’m out of your car. Drive on, I’ll get another,” and held up my phone.

This had clearly never happened before – it looked like plenty of people had thought “This guy is crazy” but went the “so I’d better let him do what he wants” route instead of “so I’m getting out of his car”. Which is totally normal! We’re socialized to prioritize “not making a scene” over personal safety. But when you do call that bluff, when you defy the social convention that the other person is counting on to make you do what they want you to do, they don’t know how to react, which gives you time for a clean getaway. And maybe he thought I was a dickhead but what do I care what an asshole thinks of me? 

Anyway the moral of the story is yes, you should know that you can almost always leave a situation and often it’s in your best interest to do so. 

(Right after I called for another car he picked up a fare using Quick Match or whatever it’s called, peeled out of the Lyft lane, and hit another car well nigh immediately.)

rumman:

patti and dolly harmonizing to an acrylic nail beat