Excusing Judges for Knowing Too Much

[Dale Thorn]

Peter Hendrickson wrote:
> At 9:54 AM 11/8/1996, Timothy C. May wrote:
> >At 8:20 AM -0500 11/8/96, Jim Ray wrote:
> >> been decided and appealed, because of this very possibility. I am already
> >> concerned that an ambitious U.S. Attorney, using Alta Vista, could attempt
> >> to argue that "cypherpunk terrorists have been secretly trying to subtly
> >> influence Kozinski's thinking, and that therefore he should be removed from
> >> the case in favor of some judge who has no clue whatsoever about the 'Net,
> >> encryption, anonymous remailers, etc." [I am sure the argument wouldn't be
> >> put quite that way <g> but that's what the U.S. Attorney would mean.] There
> >> is now a judge with some idea of these issues who will IMNSHO probably be
> >> fair to "our" side. It is a rare opportunity, and I don't want to "blow it."

So how do you get a fair trial on a controversial issue?  I'm asking this seriously.

In the O.J. case, if the "evidence" followed standards and weren't tainted, and they
didn't have a racist psycho like Fuhrman all over the case, and neo-Nazis over at
Cedars-Sinai collecting O.J.'s blood, then we wouldn't have so much controversy.

But the "mass majority" decided he was guilty anyway, damn the evidence or how it was
collected, or what that could mean if you or I were framed, so, take a look around at
cypherpunks, and how they disagree widely on issues, and ask yourself how you could
get a fair trial from a cypherpunks jury.

But the jury system is still *much* better than judges only, as long as the jury isn't
stacked.  For example, the new O.J. jury is nearly all white, and since that particular
venue requires only a majority (not unanimous) decision, the jury is defacto all white,
which is tantamount to a lynching.

So how do you prescribe fair jury selection?