1. Origin: "I can control the jury"
The opposite of "out of control" is "in control". "Out of Control Jury" tells the story of a professional jury consultant who tried to control the outcome of the trial by manipulating the jury but ended up in jail.
Two years after a stockbroker was killed in a shooting on her son's birthday, the widow has decided to sue gun maker Vicksburg. The case against the gun company has lost less and won more. The defense attorney, Loerken, selected jury members based on his personal experience and cooperation with the screening consultant, but he still accepted the cooperation with the jury screening consultant Lawrence. On the other hand, the gun company hired the famous jury screening consultant Lan Jin to comprehensively investigate the background of the jury members, in order to control the jury to win the verdict. Young Nick mixed into the jury, cooperated with his partner, and made an offer to both the prosecution and the defense on the grounds of "controlling the jury and thus controlling the verdict". As the trial progresses step by step, Lan Jin will do whatever it takes to win the jury's support, but Lorre still believes that relying on his own evidence can win the case. In the end, Blue Gold fell into the trap of Nick and Mary, and the attempt to manipulate the jury failed, and the jury made a final uncontrolled verdict.
The storyline is set under the brightly colored coat of the "shooting case", which can easily stimulate the sensitive nerves in people's brains, but the story seems to be taking a different tack - although the issue of gun ban is involved, it is by no means the protagonist. , the whole movie wants to show the game between the prosecution and the defense under the jury system, and dramatically restore the role of the jury in the trial of the case.
2. The Game: Who Controls the Jury?
The plot development of the whole film revolves around the trial of the case by the American jury. Taking off the excited coat of gun control, the film shows us the basic procedural rules and performance rules of the American jury.
The first is the selection of the jury. Before the official hearing, the judge conducts a first round of screening of jurors based on the roster registered in the local area. The author would like to call this screening a "statutory screening"—that is, the judges eliminate those who are not suitable to be jurors in this case based on the conditions stipulated by the law and the facts of the case. In this round of screening, in addition to the conditions strictly regulated by the law, there are also some judgments made by judges based on the objective perspective of a third party. At the beginning of the film, the judge questioned the candidate jurors, and the middle-aged black man was disqualified from the jury because he was too emotional. Interestingly, the movie also tells us a cold knowledge: "Blind people can also be jurors." After the first round of selection, came the second round of selection, which I call "intentional selection"—— The lawyers of both parties used their veto power to eliminate the parties who were not favorable to their side, and finally selected 12 jury members and 12 jury candidates. The selection of the jury is the first round of the game between the prosecution and the defense. In order to achieve such a goal, Lan Jin showed his unscrupulous nature from the very beginning: he and the team behind him did everything possible to investigate the background of the candidate jurors, trying to use threats and other methods to select jurors who were easy to win the vote member. Against the background of the system that "manipulating a jury is a felony", it is extremely shocking to use everything. Money seems to reduce justice to nothing, and interests always have a way to make people take risks.
Then there is the control mechanism that juries are subject to in the trial of cases. In order to ensure the fairness and justice of the case trial, jurors are subject to various restrictions such as "no drinking" and "no phone use" during the trial. In the game between Nick and Blue and Gold, he used the law's control mechanism on jurors to make those who support Blue and Gold's side leave the jury. At the same time, there will also be a jury chairman between the juries, and the jury chairman will also affect the final voting result to a certain extent. The film also shows a special case of the jury system - "quarantine". Usually, jurors are not segregated. In this case, in order to avoid excessive interference with the jury by both the prosecution and the defense, the judge finally chose to segregate jurors. The control mechanism for jurors actually ensures the objectivity and fairness of the trial results through a method of "procedural justice" - minimizing the interference and influence of external information on jurors.
Finally, there is the role of the jury in the trial system. After hearing the trial process of the case, the jury makes a judgment on the facts of the case and finally forms a verdict. Generally speaking, it takes more than 9 votes to reach the voting result. The jurors' debate on the merits of the case in the film also vividly reflects the process of the jury forming the final verdict. Veterans believe that life is inherently unfair and should not award compensation to gun companies, while black women disagree, and jurors have come to a final verdict after a heated debate.
From the formation of the jury to the final judgment, it is an important manifestation of the role played by the jury system in judicial trials. In such a process, Lohr and Lan Jin showed us different attitudes towards the jury: Lohr worked hard to find witnesses and used the means of questioning to prove the prosecution's position to the jury; while the defense lawyers were slightly prepared but rely on Blue and Gold took great pains to bribe and threaten the jury. And young Nick and Mary are always preventing Blue Gold from taking control of the jury. But this does not mean that Nick and Mary are the so-called incarnations of justice. The attack on evil is not necessarily for the purpose of good. In the author's opinion, the fatal blow of the final deposit slip is a "revenge" from many years ago. ". In any case, the results are always reassuring.
3. The opinion of the scorpion: "Control the jury"
Today when we talk about the ancient system of the jury, we can trace it back to the circuit court sent out in the time of Frank Charlemagne, looking for twelve loyal knights to complete an administrative procedural investigation. In the history of the common law system, in order to separate the prosecution and the trial and ensure the neutrality of the trial to the greatest extent, a 12-member small jury and a 24-member grand jury system were established. In 1166, Henry II's "Clarington's Edict" summoned 12 knights to prosecute criminals (Henry II sent circuit judges to various places during the judicial reform, convened a sworn investigation of 12 people, and 12 knights brought charges against the criminal suspects. , and then judged by the circuit judge through witnesses, physical evidence, duel by oath, trial by gods, etc.). In the period of King John in 1215, with the promulgation of the Magna Carta and the Rutland Edict, the divine judgment was abolished, and the grand jury began to assume the role of trial. In today's Anglo-American and French countries, the United Kingdom has abolished the jury system, but it is still retained in the United States, playing a role similar to that of the Chinese public prosecutor.
Regarding the origin of the jury system, Whitman also mentioned in "The Origin of Distrust", "The jury is also a divine judge in a certain sense, and 12 people represent the will of God." Influenced by the concept, the British at that time believed that when a judge tried to kill a murder, he was carrying a "blood crime", so looking for 12 juries to represent God's will is to avoid the judge's "blood crime". From this point of view, the jury system is the best interpretation of "three stooges, the top Zhuge Liang". Although they have not undergone professional training, they have the most simple concept of justice and legal feelings.
In the author's opinion, the control of jury is a way to maintain substantive justice through procedural justice. The control of the jury should remain in the form—that is, the independence of the jury should be guaranteed through various means. In fact, the jury also plays the role of a "quasi-judge" in a case. In the tug-of-war between the prosecution and the defense, the judge selects a trial group recognized by both parties to make judgments on the facts of the case or the determination of responsibility. It is the true meaning of a jury to let 12 ordinary but very different people "deal on the facts" and judge the case with the most genuine and simple legal feelings in their hearts. The design of the jury system itself has a "democratic" color. Although we have to admit that "the rabble" may not necessarily make the most fair judgment, such a system is more like a kind of exclusive enjoyment of judges. Due to the limitation of trial rights, the benefit of the 12-person civilian jury is that it can avoid the judge's arbitrariness to a certain extent, and overcome the judge's thinking limitations with ordinary people's simple legal feelings. From this perspective, the significance of the jury system is to balance an arbitrariness. Once the control of the jury exceeds the limit of the objective procedure and attempts to control the subjective perception among the members of the jury, the jury will return to the other side of the "arbitrary" balance, and the consequences will be disastrous. In other words, in the legal process, the jury should be strictly controlled, but in the judgment involving values, the jury should be in a state of "out of control" - no party can control the heart of the jury. The expression of true meaning.
Based on the view that jury trials should be "uncontrolled", the author does not appreciate the actions of the young Nick and Mary in the film: their behavior of infiltrating the jury by various means is certainly a deterrent to Blue Gold's illegal behavior, but this There is something illegal about the act of stopping itself—a kind of personal heroism akin to chivalrous justice. It should be noted that we are accustomed to applauding heroes, but for a good system design and operation, its real significance is to limit human behavior to a system that conforms to the value orientation of the system designer through various regulations. Rather than relying on "superheroes" to correct the loopholes in the implementation of the system - there are often systems and heroes are not often, and it is only a beautiful fantasy of idealists to hope that "superman" will bring fairness and justice. In the treacherous and unpredictable practice, only a mandatory and clear institutional framework design can limit those who attempt to undermine fairness and justice. The author has no intention of denying the role of heroes, but just thinks that we should put more chips on a certain system rather than "gamble" that there will be a certain "superman" to save the world.
In modern Anglo-American law, the use of the jury system is no longer in the majority due to high cost and unprofessionalism, but we still should not deny its true legal status and its function of the rule of law in special types of cases. Although there are some flaws in the system itself, we can see that the jury system written into the U.S. Constitution has more important political value today: it is not only a right to litigate, but also a political right. From this perspective, the reservation of the jury system is of great historical and human rights value.
All legal issues are ultimately human issues, just as Nick refuted the remarks that veterans are "born not equal", we should still turn to Lorre, in the face of "rule of man" situations like jury, Firmly believe in human nature, and firmly believe that the jury will make a correct verdict if there is sufficient evidence, instead of tempting others to make choices that go against their free will, like blue and gold, like a snake incarnated by Satan.
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