Patricia Sylvester may have learned the ultimate lesson of “never ask a question in trial that you do not know the answer to.” Sylvester, 49, was overjoyed when a jury came back with a “not guilty” to vehicular assault in Island County Superior Court in Washington. While she cried with joy, Judge Alan Hancock polled the jury only to have one woman say that she didn’t agree with the “not guilty” verdict. He sent the jury back to voted again. By the time they had returned, they had convicted Sylvester.
I have serious reservations about this process since this “second bite at the apple” could have been influenced by the reaction in the courtroom and the defendant’s reaction. Sylvester was charged after an accident in 2008 that left a man with a collapsed lung and three fractured ribs. She was driving a 1996 Acura when she braked to avoid a car and lost control of her car. He hit a Subaru driven by Michael Nichols.
The jury still found her not guilty of the offense of committing vehicular assault while intoxicated.
There are some reports indicating that the holdout juror was consistent in her voting and that the jury misunderstood a jury instruction regarding the necessity of a unanimous decision. I am not sure how “unanimous” is ambiguous but they believed that every vote was not needed for a not guilty verdict.
In their defense, they had sent questions about the unanimous verdict requirement, but obviously remained confused.
Jurors said that, when the judge sent them back, they looked more seriously at the evidence and found guilty.
It is hardly comforting that they took the time to look more seriously at the evidence after the verdict was announced. The defendant’s reaction and that of the courtroom could have influenced their response. It is true that a judge will often tell a divided jury to continue their deliberations. However, this is a materially different matter when the jury has been called to publicly identify their votes in open court. It seems to me that the earlier divided vote was an accurate tally and, if the court was not going to accept the not guilty verdict (which is understandable), a mistrial would be in order.
This case shows why lawyers need to ask for a polling of the jury if a court does not do so automatically — when you are on the losing side. However, in this case, Sylvester’s attorney reportedly asked for the polling. I am not sure why you would want to poll a not guilty jury. The attorney may have suspected a division and wanted to put the matter to rest for appeal. Yet, it was a gamble for the same reason that cost the client dearly.
It is not malpractice to do so. Such matters are treated as matters of discretionary tactics.
For the full story, click here.
Byron,
In the words of Ronnie Reagan “Here you go again.”
“The educational theory du jour is ill preparing our children for life. People have to be taught to think, for most it does not come naturally. And they have to be taught to think properly, to question, to analyze, to argue logically and effectively.”
I agree completely, but don’t you get that its your people in the keep my taxes low crowd that are responsible for this? You know most of them don’t agree with even the concept of a free public education, which would mean the limitation of education to those who could afford it and screw the rest of the people.
“The presidents of major corporations are there for a reason and that reason is the ability to reason.”
Not true mostly. They are there because they could negotiate the politics of the situation and come out on top. How do you explain the world’s premier auto industry, lying in tatters, except by poor leadership decisions. That is only one of many “for instances” I could give.
“Certainly entrepreneurs and businessmen have given us a very high standard of living and free markets are lifting China and India into first world status.”
The living conditions in China and India are for most people third world. The chinese factories are barely more than slave operations. Inboth places there is money being made and wealth created, but it is in the hands of a few. India is only marginally better than China because the latter has morphed from a communist to fascist state while keeping its communistic party and trappings. India is slightly better but is dominated by both a hereditary and wealthy elite and also burdened by a still existing rigid caste system.
“I think most are run for the benefit of the shareholders and the employees (I understand that not all are treated equally).”
Corporations are run for the purpose of maximizing profits. That is their nature and it is why you need governments to regulate them. While a smart businessman should think about the employees because it is good business practice, in truth the overwhelming majority don’t because they view the world and their jobs only in terms of short term profit. That is how the stock market judges them and so that is how they keep their jobs.
I know what a smart man you are and you’re probably an excellent businessman and fair employer. You see the world sometimes though as if it were a Frank Capra movie and sadly it isn’t.
“what happens when you let corporations dictate education.”
Buddha,
Happy you’re back and feeling better. Your comments in that post nailed it I think, but I would add one more idea to think about: The printing press and its’ successors. While print and now electronic media has certainly democratized knowledge, it has also caused humans to not develop and utilize skills that have been there since the dawn of homo sapiens. We don’t develop the memory skills of our ancestora and we have become viscerally less in touch with our environment. Think of Shakespeare, who in his time provided entertainment for the “uneducated” masses. They understood him and could follow along. For us, beyond the middle English used, it is a more difficult proposition.
This has all accelerated with the advent of radion, movies, TV and the internet. Thought become soundbites and despite the old cliches “a picture is not worth a thousand words.”
Correction: CEOs are arely asked to sacrifice anything.
That should read: CEOs are rarely asked to sacrifice anything.
Byron–
Greed may also be a component of an individual’s immorality/amorality. I think we need many more heads of corporations who understand what life is like today for normal folks. I believe some of them need a good shot of empathy serum.
Why do we now have such a great disparity in pay bewteen the salary of CEOs and workers? I believe the average CEO now earns nearly 300 times what an average worker does. When corporations claim they’re experiencing financial problems, it always seems to be the average workers who are asked to sacrifice. Sometimes they even lose their pensions. CEOs are arely asked to sacrifice anything. Sometimes incompetent corporate leaders get bought out with huge financial packages.
Elaine:
from my vantage point most American corporations are fairly well run. Some aren’t but I don’t think they are the rule. Unfortunately there is a rush to judgement about corporations. I agree that some are run by men and women that need an injection of humanity but by and large I think most are run for the benefit of the shareholders and the employees (I understand that not all are treated equally).
Certainly entrepreneurs and businessmen have given us a very high standard of living and free markets are lifting China and India into first world status.
As far as greed and incompetence go, I would say it was probably just plain incompetence. Greed may have something to do with it, but a truly competent businessman/woman is going to be able to know when they can risk and when they cant.
A truly competent person would be into rational self interest, a greedy person would not care about long term effects vs. short term gain. I believe there is a major difference. And so I would call it incompetence alone or maybe you could say that greed is a component of incompetence.
Byron–
I didn’t say there was anything wrong with a classical education. I had four years of Latin before I headed off to college. The nuns drummed the rules of grammar into my head for twelve years. I diagrammed hundreds of sentences during the time I was a student in my parochial “grammar” school.
I spent forty years in education. I worked as an elementary teacher, a school librarian, and a college instructor. Young kids do need structure and discipline. They need to learn study skills, how to do research. They need to commit certain types of information to memory. I do think, however, that sometimes a system of education can become too rigid. Children should also have ample time to explore their creativity in school…to expand their knowledge by taking field trips outside the classroom…to explore nature and the science all around them. The most important thing an educator can do is open up a child’s mind to the wonder of learning about things in science…in history…in art and music, etc.—and to introduce them to fine literature.
Surely, there are universal themes in literature. I do believe that adhering rigidly to a classics-only type education can be restricting. I feel strongly that children need balance in their education. I think teachers should have some freedom to introduce students to the best new literature—books that may become classics in the future. We shouldn’t feel that all the “great” books have already been written. If so, we close our minds to the writings of great new authors. In addition, contemporary literature may touch on problems/situations that students are actually experiencing in their own lives. How about taking more of a “something old/something new” literature approach with required books?
Teachers should have high expectations for all of their students—and should help them to achieve at the highest academic levels that they possibly can. I retired early from my elementary teaching position because I could see that I was going to be pressured to spend much of my students’ valuable educational time prepping them for standardized tests. To me—that’s not real teaching…that’s not real education.
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Byron–
You wrote: “The presidents of major corporations are there for a reason and that reason is the ability to reason.”
My response: I’d have to say that we have had more than a few heads of corporations who may have been able to reason but still managed to run their corporations, insurance companies, and banks into the ground. Was it greed or incompetence—or both?
AY,
Not fully back, but yes, I’ll survive much to the dismay of corrupt politicians, fascist corporations and trolls everywhere.
If you want to know what Oxy is like, eat something that will make you queasy but not enough to vomit and then hit your self in the forehead with a hammer three or four times. Once the initial pain fades and the numbness takes over? That’s oxy. I honestly don’t see how anyone would like them well enough to get hooked on them. It’s a ridiculous drug for recreational use. And being ridiculous, ergo, the perfect drug for Rush.
BIL,
So you are in fact back this day. I suppose you are seeing the flowers today instead of the perennial root system?
I have never had Oxy, so I cannot relate. I hope your kidney is all the better. Your wit has certainly been missed. Your Sarcasm even more.
Byron and GWLSMom,
Unfortunately you are both correct. What GWLSMom sees is accurate and a reflection of what happens when you let corporations dictate education. In many districts, this IS the case that corps run the schools by, shall we say, curriculum manipulation via textbook fallacies that amount to propaganda [the whole Creationism bowel movement], misleading media campaigns and corruption at the school board level – see KCMO schools as a perfect example of this phenomena. They are so crooked that they burn through superintendents (often genuinely seeking to improve the dismal KCMO systems) like water through a hose. And what Byron sees is the symptom and part of the net end result that GWLSMom sees – children not being taught HOW to think, but WHAT to think. His solution is sound too. I’d also add to his curricula Civics, Basic Formal and Symbolic Logic, Ethics and Comparative Religion.
The “powers that be” don’t want you or anyone else to be capable of independent thought. It’s easier for them to steal you blind, violate your Constitutional Rights, screw you over in general and – yes – even kill you if you resist their agenda. This includes the current lot of fascist sellouts in the White House. Obama has proven to differ from Bush only in who holds his leash. To his credit, they are just the greedy and not so much the war mongers like the GOP seem to prefer as their top. But that is for starting to stray from the issue of education and a topic for other times.
Lotta,
There are some who speculate that the still inexplicable rise in the rates of autism are related to a vast variety of toxins that industrializing has added to our environment. Not just one thing like vaccine preservation techniques but “all of them” [the gross pollutants not netted out by natural filtration or conversion processes into inert substances] acting in concert to cause this genetic mutation – an epidemiological nightmare to pin down if this is the mechanic causing the mutation. Not so much lead poisoning as “industrial civilization” poisoning.
lottakatz:
“I’d like to know if the species may have been fundamentally damaged as an evolutionary process in response to our material progress and the ubiquitous pollution we live in, with, and ingest.”
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Akin to the lead poisoning endemic in ancient Rome, I’d say.
http://ces3.ca.uky.edu/energy/lead/rome_lead.htm
GWLAWSCHOOLMOM:
“being prepared for life is not invaluable. being able to read the classics gets them what when they graduate and seek employment? teaching? what else?”
They will be able to think. Maybe even think outside the box. Develop new ideas, revise old worn out methodologies, that type of thing. The presidents of major corporations are there for a reason and that reason is the ability to reason.
Obviously you need to study what you enjoy but a classical education in elementary and high schools would go along way in preparing children for success.
Declining intelligence.
Since the industrial revolution the West has been breathing air and drinking water polluted with heavy metals and hydrocarbons, We invented synthetic compounds after WWII and have been ingesting them in our food and medicine and absorbing them by osmosis every time we play with a children’s toy, unwrap a product wrapped in plastic or. until recently. smell that new-car smell. We have thousands of cleaning products and OTC medications and hygiene products being produced in a generally unregulated environment. We have factory farming of animals fed a toxic brew of medications that get passed up the food chain with every bite we take. Our atmosphere is filled with radiation (communication and electrical) of our own making and from which few places on earth can escape.
I’d like to see a comparison of a wide sample of genetic material from agrarian people that were born and died before 1800 and a sample of the same number and wide distribution of people born after 2000. We may be dealing with a majority of people born today that just don’t have the genetic wherewithal our ancestors had and that includes the mental/neurological material potential needed to function at a high level.
I’d like to know if the species may have been fundamentally damaged as an evolutionary process in response to our material progress and the ubiquitous pollution we live in, with, and ingest. Whatever the results they would be a surprise- weather we’re doing just fine at the DNA level or weather we’re not.
Byron writes: A classical education was what most of our founders had, Greek, Latin etc. I am not an educator but what is wrong with Greek, Latin, Grammar, Mathematics, Forensics and Science? You are then well prepared for college and at that point can study whatever the hell you want and be extremely well prepared to do it.
The educational theory du jour is ill preparing our children for life. People have to be taught to think, for most it does not come naturally. And they have to be taught to think properly, to question, to analyze, to argue logically and effectively.
you raise some interesting points…. but think what we are raising kids to do… what kinds of work will they perform in their lives?
I used to balk at small group projects for my kid and then I realized that most kids (at the time) were being prepared for cube-farm types of employment for large corporations that require small project management and being able to work to this style prepares them for that.
being prepared for life is not invaluable. being able to read the classics gets them what when they graduate and seek employment? teaching? what else?
Elaine M.:
“Does it always have to be books by old dead guys? I think the point is reading quality books written by people of either gender…whether they be contemporary titles or old classics.”
Old dead women are certainly welcome as well, I did not mean to be a paternalistic exclusionary!
Although I try not to read anything written after about 1950 if I can help it. I know very limiting. But if you read the classics, you find that most of the tales have already been told in one form or another. Shakespeare stealing from the Greeks, and everyone else stealing from Shakespeare. Or any myriad of subjects, go back to the source which is usually old dead people.
Read those first and then read the new stuff, it will give you a better understanding of the new stuff (that author probably already read the old dead guys and gals) and allow you to build on your knowledge.
A classical education was what most of our founders had, Greek, Latin etc. I am not an educator but what is wrong with Greek, Latin, Grammar, Mathematics, Forensics and Science? You are then well prepared for college and at that point can study whatever the hell you want and be extremely well prepared to do it.
The educational theory du jour is ill preparing our children for life. People have to be taught to think, for most it does not come naturally. And they have to be taught to think properly, to question, to analyze, to argue logically and effectively.
I think, because education is free, we do not put enough value on an education in this country. Children and parents don’t appreciate what a real education can do for a child. It is all about preparing people to work for a company. That is not education but preparation for a type of slavery.
AY:
“As mespo stated and I agree with him or he agrees with me I am not sure which.”
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As usual, AY I agree with you.
Peanut gallery update:
NY Times Editorial
The Cover-Up Continues
Published October 25, 2009
The Obama administration has clung for so long to the Bush administration’s expansive claims of national security and executive power that it is in danger of turning President George W. Bush’s cover-up of abuses committed in the name of fighting terrorism into President Barack Obama’s cover-up.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/26/opinion/26mon1.html?ref=opinion
“perhaps the time has come for nullification of juries…”
“If the glove does not fit…etc., etc.
Recently we discussed jury nullification of law; perhaps the time has come for nullification of juries…
Okay… my relationship to the law in general is to keep my eyes peeled for the highway patrol, report for jury duty when called and watching endless episodes of Law and Order and I have a kid in law school. that’s it.
so. are defendants not allowed to express joy or relief when a not guilty verdict comes their way for fear that the judge will do something like this? is this really kosher?
on tv, people jump for joy when found not guilty.
if I were a defendant found not guilty I would jump for joy.
maybe celebrating later is the thing to do.
Byron–
Does it always have to be books by old dead guys? I think the point is reading quality books written by people of either gender…whether they be contemporary titles or old classics.
I taught a children’s literature course at Boston University for several years. Unfortunately, there are states that don’t require elementary teachers to take a children’s literature course in order to be certified. Some college teacher-training programs lack certain literature requirements too. One of my friends was an English/Language Arts Director for a large public school system. She found that a number of applicants for English teaching positions at her high school had never had a college course in Shakespeare.
I think things are going to get worse in education because so much emphasis is being placed on prepping children for standardized tests. There is a tremendous amount of pressure on teachers and principles and superintendents to raise the scores by a specific percentage every year.