Tales Of Our Times

By JOHN BARTLIT
New Mexico Citizens
for Clean Air & Water 

The televised trial this month of former Officer Chauvin is a profound display of working to achieve a fair decision, considering all the facts that are ably verified on both sides of all questions in court.

I will not review key points in the case nor the breadth of evidence for them from one side or the other. My topic instead is the time-tested methods of verifying and using facts that the judge enforces in a court trial. These are basics in the rule of law. This column is not a lawbook. It amounts to notes from a primer, which is part of how a mix of citizens becomes a working jury.

A trial is held in a courtroom in the locale with ready access to relevant documents and most of the firsthand witnesses to the issue before the court. In this instance, the issue is the series of interactions between certain police officers and Mr. Floyd in Minneapolis last spring, during which Mr. Floyd died. This kind of trial requires a number of participants, who carry out specific tasks in the trial. The world has tried many legal procedures for deciding between guilty and not guilty. No process does better than trial by a citizens jury—a precise forum for relevant facts to be offered, challenged, supported, and judged.

The required participants are prosecutors, whose main task is to provide the best evidence they can find and verify (from documents and witnesses) that the person on trial is guilty as charged. The trial also must have lawyers for the defense, whose main task is to provide the best evidence they can find and verify (from witnesses and documents) that the person charged is not guilty as charged. A trial has a judge, whose task is to assure that all the court proceedings are in accord with well established laws and rules of evidence. This task also uses a court stenographer, whose job is to transcribe every word uttered while the court is in session, for the record. 

Evidence comes in via records, firsthand witnesses, and expert witnesses that each side presents to strengthen its case; then the opposing side cross-examines (asks questions to) to show weak points in that case. The overall goal is to find all the strong points and expose all the weak points for the jury to judge. If the defense were to neglect its task, prosecutors would grow less diligent, and vice versa. Over time, cases would be perfunctory. That road heads back to tyranny.

Finally, the case goes to democracy’s hard-won touchstone of justice—a smallish jury of ordinary people. Yet, “ordinary” has some specific qualifiers so that the whole process can work as well as it needs to. Possible jurors are questioned at the outset about their views that would reveal if they were predisposed to one side of the case before hearing any verified evidence. If so, those ordinary people are not selected for the jury. Justice rests on judging verified evidence. 

In a highly public case, to help the jury deal more thoroughly with verified evidence, jurors are “sequestered.” This means jurors are ordered not to watch any of the news or hear any opinions about the trial while it proceeds. Something hard to avoid. To a court, no news or news “analysis” qualifies as verified evidence and no news person nor commenter has firsthand knowledge worth hearing in court.

See the further impacts of news. Folks commonly turn to “news people” to learn “the facts” in the matter. Yet to a court, news people are too biased to be jurors and have no knowledge that jurors should consider. This reality affects national affairs, but is rarely heard nor analyzed in the news. The key for juries should be a key for all: to fit together and weigh verified facts specific to the charges made.

Societies have struggled mightily for centuries to devise more democratic governments. Civil protest is an old and honorable way of questioning actions. Those lengthy efforts have helped formulate the powerful process of trial by jury we now have. Only trials stay so intently focused on evidence and its verifiability, which are judged by a smallish sample of ordinary, yet largely fair-minded people, after they have paid attention to every minute and every voice in the courtroom.

The jury trial remains the best forum known for finding justice under democracy’s rule of law.

Note: Both this column and this note were finalized before all on the Minneapolis jury of 12 reached a verdict.