To listen to all the hype, one would think that the hung jury and subsequent mistrial in the Lindsay Clancy case was the first of its kind. It was not. I suspect that the reactions would be different and from different sources had the jury been deadlocked at 11-1 in favor of conviction. At least one of the women on the jury admitted they had an agenda to render a verdict that would help women. She said it was obvious from the start that the prosecutor was biased. Of course he was. That was his job, just as the defense attorney was biased toward his client. A trial is an adversarial proceeding. Hearing only one side of anything is not a good way to determine the truth of it. They were furious at the one man who could and would not agree with their agenda by verdict. He stood by his finding that three children had been brutally killed. Guess what. He may have been a better juror than some of the others.
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Our right to trial by jury is one of (if not) the greatest protections a criminal defendant may have. It may not be perfect, but it certainly is worthy of preservation and protection from agendas. Without a jury, the danger increases that a verdict and resulting sentence could be pursuant to a political agenda at the expense of justice.
Our jury trial system can be simplified as follows. The jury is the trier of facts. Only they can determine the facts in the case pursuant to the rules of evidence. Sure, a judge rules on questions as to a rule of evidence, but the jury retains its duty to determine the facts. After the close of evidence, the judge holds a charge conference with the attorneys where, after hearing from both sides, he makes a decision as to what charges to give the jury. Individual charges address individual issues, but the entirety of the charges is called the court’s charge to the jury. This instructs the jury what the applicable law is in the case before them and instructs them to apply the law as charged to the facts of the case and reach a unanimous verdict. He will remind them of their oaths as jurors. With this in mind, it is important that we look at the procedural aspects of this trial and every trial.
Before the trial even begins, a panel of jurors is brought into the courtroom as potential jurors. Without addressing the question of alternate jurors to get a jury of 12 people, the court brings in 24 jurors. The panel takes an oath to tell the truth to the questions that will be asked of them by the court and the respective attorneys. After some initial general questions from the court, the prosecutor and the defense counsel are allowed to ask certain questions of the jurors in an effort to learn as much as permissibly possible about each individual juror. They may be asked about their occupation, their family, whether they or family members have been involved in similar proceedings, even their general life experiences to a degree, all to determine if they think a juror would be good for their side of the case. An attorney may ask the court to disqualify a juror for cause. This process is called voir dire. A jury is not picked in the sense of the word; rather, a jury is chosen by each attorney being allowed to strike six individual jurors from the panel, one at a time. The remaining twelve are the jury for the case.
The court will then read out the surviving 12 members of the panel, dismiss the others, and advise the jury to please be seated in the jury box. The judge will then have the jury all take an oath. This may vary slightly from state to state, but in general, the jury swears to well and truly try the case before them. The word “well” is generally interpreted to mean without any bias to either side. This is a crucial part of the jury trial system’s integrity. If jurors fail to follow their oath in this regard and instead utilize their personal agendas in reaching a verdict, then the system fails. In effect, the jury trial then would be rendered little more than a political lynching or acquittal by a totalitarian government. We are already seeing this danger manifest itself in certain parts of the country, where the political agenda in a given area almost guarantees certain people will be convicted or acquitted, depending on whether they are for or against the agenda of the jury. We had better start paying attention to this trend, because it could easily destroy our entire judicial system.
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Applying the above to the Clancy case, what failures or possible failures may have taken place? As mentioned above, at least one juror has spoken out about some of the jurors having an agenda to render a verdict that would benefit women in the future. This may have violated the jury’s oath to well and truly try the case. The same could be said about the sole juror holding out for conviction, if his position were a result of a personal agenda and not a personal decision based on the facts and charge. Any violation of a juror’s oath should be prosecuted accordingly.
There has been speculation that the holdout juror may not have completed his juror questionnaire completely honestly. The same might be asked of all the jurors. Either way, such omission may or may not have resulted in a juror being stricken from the panel and not being a juror, but it doesn’t mean one has an agenda or bias. Those jury questionnaires should have been destroyed, so this is unprovable speculation if procedures were followed.
In such cases, the jury’s identities are often protected. This case is an excellent example of why that is so important. The outrage from the women of the Left and others has been such that the holdout juror’s personal safety and well-being are in jeopardy. NBC reportedly has even doxxed him. This is highly improper and dangerous. Hopefully, that juror will end up owning a substantial stake in NBC’s assets. We should ask how his name was obtained in the first place. After voir dire and a jury has been stricken, the court gathers up from the attorneys any information sheets regarding the jury panel. These should be destroyed and thus unavailable. Was this done? If not, who leaked the information? Did another juror release his name? All this will come out in a civil suit if one is filed.
If the holdout juror based his position on the facts as he found them and per the court’s charge, then he is the hero of that trial. Further, his stance would exemplify how the system should function. We require unanimous verdicts in criminal cases. That a lone juror can prevent a possible injustice, be it a conviction or an acquittal, is a testament to our system. Does anyone doubt that those now wanting to destroy the holdout juror would instead be praising him if he was the holdout against a conviction of Ms. Clancy? Come on, man.
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