Jury Duty 2: Bias towards the defendants in our courts.

My first posting on this subject.

Micheal Jackson declared "not guilty"...makes sense.

Not that he was innocent -- just that the jury found enough reasonable doubt in the charges to declare him "not guilty."

One thing everyone needs to understand about jurisprudence: There is a strong bias towards the defendant in the trials. This is shown by how the judgements are defined:

• Guilty: Obvious beyond a reasonable doubt that that person HAD to do the acts (s)he's accused of.
  
• Not Guilty: There's enough reasonable doubt that a guilty verdict isn't warrented.

Notice that one has to be pretty much sure of the defendant's guilt in the specific instance to judge the defendant guilty. Whatever "reasonable doubt" is (my definition: if I can easily see a scenario that doesn't damn the defendant going on, I can assume "reasonable doubt."), if it exists you must accept it.

Then how to explain that (outside of Hollywood cases) there's a very high (I heard 95%) level of successful prosecutions? Part of it is to public bias ("if the guy's on trial, they gotta be guilty"), but a major part of it is that many cases aren't brought to court because the prosecution believes the proof isn't there. It's basically a question of whether the prosecution feels they can get a guilty verdict (or at least a plea bargain) out of the trial.

As for these Hollywood cases, it's more a matter (I believe) that the prosecution feels they have to do SOMETHING or they'll be seen in the public eye as doing nothing. Hence the half-baked cases and abortions that come up regularly when a celebrity is brought up.

And, as an article I read online said, MJ's trial was about celebrity, not child molesting. The charge was merely the cover.