Free Republic

Florida federal prosecutors want to ask potential jurors in Donald Trump's classified documents case if they believe the 2020 election was "stolen" and if they hold opinions about how the FBI executed a highly publicized search warrant at his Mar-a-Lago resort... Prosecutors also want to ask potential jurors how much media coverage they have seen or read about the case, if they have any opinions about Trump's public statements about the case or about special counsel Jack Smith, and if they believe the prosecution is "unfair" or if any of the defendants are "being treated unfairly by the court system."...

This week, the US Supreme Court heard arguments from hedge fund manager George Jarkesy, in his appeal that the Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC) fining and barring him from the industry for securities fraud violated his Seventh Amendment right to a jury trial. Michael McColloch, attorney for Jarkesy, argued that "the procedure in which the SEC acts as prosecutor, judge, and jury is fundamentally unfair. The person accused by the SEC has the burden of trying to persuade people who already deem him guilty that he's not. His right to be judged by an unbiased jury of his peers has...

The criminal trial ended more than two and a half years ago, but Judge Jesse M. Furman can still vividly recall the case. It stands out, not because of the defendant or the subject matter, but because of its rarity: In his four-plus years on the bench in Federal District Court in Manhattan, it was his only criminal jury trial. He is far from alone. Judge J. Paul Oetken, in half a decade on that bench, has had four criminal trials, including one that was repeated after a jury deadlocked. For Judge Lewis A. Kaplan, who has handled some of...

"Return to the Court With a Verdict of Guilty": That's what a Canadian judge told the jury in a marijuana possession case, where the defendant claimed he possessed the marijuana for medical reasons (though he apparently didn't qualify for some reason for Canada's medical marijuana exemption): The judge instructed the jurors "to retire to the jury room to consider what I have said, appoint one of yourselves to be your foreperson, and then to return to the court with a verdict of guilty." Yesterday, the Supreme Court of Canada reversed the conviction (R. v. Krieger), concluding -- as do American...

Civil jury trials are following the path of the dinosaurs: They are becoming extinct. And as they vanish, some lawyers worry that the Seventh Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, the guarantee of a trial by jury, may also disappear. "It's all a matter of economics," Dale Hicks, president of the San Antonio chapter of the American Board of Trial Advocates, says. [. . .] The disappearing civil law trial phenomenon is not exclusive to state district courts or Texas. The same thing is happening in district and federal courts across the country — a trend that has become a hot...

I just searched here at Free Republic for articles under the keywords "jury trial" and I found only one listed. It is the story of a crime, for which an offer of a plea bargain was made, that if accepted, would have carried a penalty of two days in jail. The accused insisted upon a jury trial and was acquitted. Terri Schiavo, on the other hand, didn't have a trial by jury. Her fate rested in the hands of one man. What was at stake was not a brief jail sentence but her very life. Our right to a trial...

The timing of his trial clearly helped. What jury in its right mind, after all, would sit down in the dead of winter and send a man to jail for picking a flower? "A lot of people thought this was a big joke," Henry Peters said Tuesday from his home in Rockland. "And it does seem kind of funny getting arrested for picking a flower."But tickled as he may be by last week's "not guilty" verdict in Knox County Superior Court, let's be clear about one thing. Peters, a 39-year-old boatbuilder, is still peeved and then some at police who...