Hiya All,
I thought I posted this yesterday...musta been a bad brain day
At anyrate, I can't find a post including what I meant to add for discussion AND I wonder if it might help explain some of the thinking with choosing 10 women and 2 men. Well, that might be aside from, maybe, the defense using all of its peremptory challenges before it got to the 11th and 12th jurors? Maybe the defense had hoped to pick "all women" but didn't have any more peremptory challenges?
From this article by Chris Hayes, Fox2Now:
>>Coleman stands trial April 25th, accused of strangling his wife and kids to be with his mistress. Jurors include a woman who told the Court her son was murdered and a student who said her Aunt was murdered. Both cases remain unsolved, but the women are convinced they could keep an open mind. One woman even said that if police catch her son's killer, she would not want to see him sentenced to death. <<
Hmmm... So there is a juror whose son was murdered but even in the event that her son's killer was tried, she wouldn't want that killer sentenced to death? Is that the "woman" referenced in the last sentence of the above quote? Does that not sound like a HUGELY strong statement against the death penalty? On the other hand, if the son was killed by a motorist who hit them and ran, and it was determined that the son was inebriated and in the middle of the road (as in having been in the road inebriated many times before), well maybe there might be a thought of "We couldn't keep him out of the road, it isn't right to do a hit and run, but he was in the road all the time." I could think of a flock of scenarios like the latter where someone might say, "He was killed, but the circumstances seem to point to someone defending themselves or a mere accident."
Well maybe this isn't a strong statement/conviction against the death penalty, but rather a reflection on the circumstances of how the son was killed? OR, maybe this person would not consider the death penalty for someone who kills only one person? Or maybe they would consider it depending upon the totality of things involved in the murders? One way or another, this sounds a bit troubling that this person made that statement yet they were found to be someone who could consider the death penalty?
Yo! Chris...are you reading? Were you or any of the other reporters on your team around when they were interviewing the above prospective juror? How might a juror who seemed to be making a statement against the death penalty make it onto the jury? Can you or ANYONE that was there explain what the juror might have said that could have permitted both teams of attorneys to consider that she could keep an open mind about a death penalty sentence.
And about peremptory challenges...
Ummm...Nick Pistor, you reading? What's up with the "number" or "counting" on peremptory challenges? (see below) And -- anyone -- while we're at it, how come I can't find any articles that make the number of peremptory challenges permitted in a criminal trial in Illinois clear?
From this St. Louis Today article:
>>The prosecution and defense each has 14 peremptory challenges, the legal term for the right to reject a jury candidate without explanation. They had not used any through Wednesday.<<
Yeesh, what's the "16" in the following?
From St. Louis Today article (Pistor):
>>That was the group winnowed to 12 jurors and four alternates on Tuesday. Prosecutors used 10 peremptory challenges to weed out jurors; the defense used 16.<<
So, if they have 14 peremptory challenges, how could they used 16? Or did they have 16 and used 16, or they had 14 and used 14?
Hmmm this issue of peremptory challenge, is it consitutional, what is the actual number allowed in picking a jury for a criminal case in the state of Illinois? I haven't been able to get any answer on this. Can anyone else?
From a wikipedia page (on "peremptory challenge" -- I won't give the URL as it posts funny in here):
>>All jurisdictions in the United States have some form of peremptory challenges. In the United States, the use of peremptory challenges by criminal prosecutors to remove persons from a cognizable group (i.e., of one race, ethnicity, or gender) based on that group characteristic has been ruled to be unconstitutional in Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79 (1986). "Batson challenge" is a term now used to refer to the act of arguing for the invalidity of a trial on the basis that peremptory challenges during jury selection resulted in the exclusion of a cognizable group.
Batson's authority has also recently been reinforced in a pair of 2005 decisions, Miller-El v. Dretke, 545 U.S. 231 (2005), and Johnson v. California, 545 U.S. 162 (2005). Furthermore, in 2009 the United States Supreme Court found in a unanimous opinion in Rivera v. Illinois that "there is no freestanding constitutional right to peremptory challenges," even when a court was mistaken in applying Batson.<<
Oh... I was digging for info today and came across something mildly/ridiculously entertaining (if it didn't make you sick.) There is someone (I'll stop there) who is putting out videos on the web about the case (commentary type). I guess that someone figures that Lintz (sp?) was set up and there is some kind of conspiracy surrounding this trial. i.e. that maybe the judge and jury have been bought to get CC off. The video maker is a, well, uh...well let's just say the someone has polka dot painted fingernails (black and white) and mentions several times, "This dog don't hunt" and figures some people might not know what that means. UGH! They're coming out of the woodwork...
