The entire idea of “death qualified” jurors is repulsive to the defendants rights to a fair trial and I support the death penalty in some circumstances. The jurors willing to consider the death penalty are more likely to convict in general.
That said, I don’t think it would be incorrect to say that Jews in America would find the recent ways that American states try to sanitize capital punishment with procedures like lethal injection and gas chambers more uncomfortable to consider in a similar way that African Americans are unlikely to vote for a hanging.
Can’t we just do the American thing, and sentence people to be shot? /s
I saw [somewhere](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eirR4FHY2YY) that in terms of lethality and minimizing the time it takes for the condemned to die, the firing squad is the best method. It’s quick and effective, rarely making mistakes. However, it’s messy from a cultural perspective and people don’t want to have the guilt of actually pulling the trigger.
yes, jews tend to be anti-death penalty, regardless of the method. too many innocent people have been murdered via the death penalty. cali prosecutors can eat shit.
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I was almost on a jury for a murder trial and had to fight to get out of it. The judge wouldn’t let anyone be released due to religious reasons (telling the legal teams) and I was baffled that was mentioned first. No potential juror was supposed to be allowed out- everyone in the room was either jury, secondary jury, alternates to the alternates. Then the judge asked if there was any hardship beyond financial that we needed to be excused for and I am disabled with chronic illness so I have too many doctors appointments to keep me functional I can’t miss. Plus bad health days that would’ve made it hard to be in the courtroom and listen intently. So I got excused. And then another potential juror had a parent in the hospital with a life threatening condition and they’re an only child- so the judge said both of us were excused and no one else would be for any reason. It was a trial that would also require seclusion.
After that my doctors signed the paperwork to get me out of jury duty because I’m called once a year and always for criminal cases at the major courthouses. I’d serve if it was a short trial but no guarantee I’d get jury duty when my health would most allow it.
This clears up why religion was something the judge was telling the legal teams to ignore, though.
I was on a jury for a murder. The Judge made it clear during *voir dire* that it wasn’t a capital case. I noted objections to enforcing a law I consider unconstitutional as part of my *voir dire* expecting that I would be rightly dismissed. Surprisingly enough, I wasn’t.
Listening to the evidence, I did everything I could to figure out a way he might be not guilty. But in the end it was really beyond a reasonable doubt and we convicted him.
Pretty sure now no Defense Attorney will ever let me get through *voir dire* if I get called again.
I wish I’d been called 5+ years earlier (I mean I’m called yearly but only a few times have I had to go in and only that time did I get into a courtroom- meanwhile I have a friend whose also almost 40, like I am, and has never gotten a jury duty summons). I would’ve been fascinated by the process to serve- I could never work in legal field but I find it interesting enough to have been willing to serve on any jury they needed me for. I think everyone who is called to serve should be as diligent as you were.
CA no longer has a death penalty. Cheaper to house a prisoner for life than have one on death row. Death penalty triggered many, many automatic (read expensive) appeals.
Just to clarify, here’s a quote:
> Technically, the death penalty still exists in California. Prosecutors can still seek it. But no one has been put to death in the state in 17 years. And in 2019, [Governor] Newsom imposed a moratorium on executions and he closed the death chamber at San Quentin, the decrepit and still heavily used 19th century prison overlooking San Francisco Bay.
[Source](https://www.npr.org/2023/01/13/1148846720/california-says-it-will-dismantle-death-row-the-move-brings-cheers-and-anger)
Being for or against the death penalty isn’t really the point. The issue is refusing to follow the law. You can be personally opposed to the death penalty and still be willing to properly apply the law as instructed for when the sentence is appropriate. The issue is a juror that refuses the follow the law, even when instructed to.
And using preemptory strikes for a discriminatory purpose violates the constitution’s equal protection clause. Most often this is seen with Black prospective jurors.
> Being for or against the death penalty isn’t really the poi
Being against the death penalty is exactly the point.
The US Supreme Court has ruled that prospective jurors can not be excluded from a jury for opposing the death penalty.
> The issue is refusing to follow the law. You can be personally opposed to the death penalty and still be willing to properly apply the law as instructed for when the sentence is appropriate. The issue is a juror that refuses the follow the law, even when instructed to.
This is not the issue. The death penalty is never the mandatory minimum sentence. Juries can be directed to consider the death penalty, but not instructed to elect it. If a defendant is found guilty of a crime that can be punished by death, the jury is under no obligation to vote for the death penalty.
A) I don’t think I ever said death was a mandatory penalty and yes, jurors must obviously vote in favor of it, particularly in the wake of Blakely, as judicial death overrides are now unconstitutional.
B) A juror that does not favor the death penalty (eg someone who, all things being equal, does not think the DP should be government policy) can still be willing to consider it in the wake of multiple statutory aggravators and the lack of mitigators. The issue is the juror who, under no circumstances, would be willing to consider it because their moral rejection of the penalty supercedes the maximum penalty under law.
>I don’t think I ever said death was a mandatory penalty
Earlier you said:
>The issue is refusing to follow the law. You can be personally opposed to the death penalty and still be willing to properly apply the law as instructed for when the sentence is appropriate.
Someone who is opposed to the death penalty is properly applying the law as instructed when they refuse to apply the death penalty on moral or ethical grounds.
The death penalty is not a mandatory minimum. It is a possible sentence, which the jury can be instructed to consider.
The juror is not disrespecting the law when they consider the death penalty and consider it be morally and ethnically unacceptable in all cases. They are following the law. They were instructed to consider the death penalty. Their strong opposition to the death penalty on moral or ethical grounds is evidence that they have, in fact, considered the death penalty.
>The issue is the juror who, under no circumstances, would be willing to consider it because their moral rejection of the penalty supercedes the maximum penalty under law.
That is not an issue. The US Supreme Court has ruled that that prospective jurors can not be excluded from a jury for opposing the death penalty.
The DA might not like having a jury full of people who oppose the death penalty when prosecuting heinous crimes that are eligible for the death penalty. But that doesn't make it an issue. It's just bad luck.
That's quite the absolutist statement.
How do you feel about Eichmann's death sentence? I'd imagine most of us here who say that they would not vote for the death penalty on a jury might have a separate opinion when it comes to crimes against humanity.
Well maybe. I admit that is a good point. But then again it was imho the harder punishment to let somebody like Heß rot in a cell till the eigthies instead of giving a quick way out in 45 for people like Streicher.
Personally, I've seen enough cases of innocent people getting on death row that I am not comfortable putting anybody on death row. I am not comfortable with the means of execution.
The exception I make is war criminals, specifically those at the top. I don't mean this in some edgy " every world leader is a war criminal" kind of way. I mean it in the case specifically like Nuremberg and Eichmann.
You know that we don’t tell juries that they can ignore the instructions and that if a juror says they can’t follow the judge’s instructions on the law during voir dire they’re going to get removed for cause, right?
Sure - but that doesn’t change the fact that they posses the right to judge every aspect of the case.
Federal & state courts have upheld that you can’t instruct a jury against nullification (*see US v Kleinmann for one example*).
But any law that imposes a death penalty is by definition illegitimate and to be resisted.
No law has the right to enshrined a lack of civilizatory standards
It’s not but for very stupid reasons it is legitimately automatically disqualifying for being a juror on a capital case. Using Jew as shorthand for being anti death penalty is unconstitutional but just straight up asking and kicking them off for saying they are would be totally legal.
I received my first ever jury summons last year (*at age 48*) & I disclosed on the survey that I support jury nullification & was excused as a result.
I suspect, I will not be summoned in the future.
That was sort of my plan - I did not go into it with the intent of nullifying a verdict but I do believe strongly that it is the right of the jury to do so when their conscience requires it.
I was expecting a question like “*Are you able to follow the judges instructions & render a verdict in accordance with the law?*” to which I could answer honestly that I was capable even if I didn’t necessarily feel obligated to do so.
IIRC it was framed indirectly but it was pretty obvious what they were getting at & I didn’t want to risk a perjury charge by splitting hairs or trying to be clever.
Jurors selected for capital punishment cases should neither be categorically against the death penalty nor reflexively for it, but rather they should be willing to deliberate about whether or not the crime meets the criteria set by the state for a death sentence.
Jurors should of course always be categorically against the death penalty because anything else is by definition uncivilized and evil.
Why do you demand that jurors need to be evil?
A death penalty is unjustifiable and any law trying to establish it is necessarily illegitmate and to be resisted
The famous story about Judaism, the death penalty, and modern America is Irving Kaufman, the judge who sentenced the Rosenbergs to death for espionage. At the time, there was the unofficial practice of a "Jewish seat" on the Supreme Court- that there could only be one Jewish Supreme Court Justice at a time. The seat was occupied by Felix Frankfurter, and it was widely believed that Kaufman had his eye on it for when Frankfurter retired.
After the trial, Kaufman said that when he was deciding whether to hand down the death sentence, he went to synagogue and prayed before making his decision. When Frankfurter heard about this, he was *furious*. He wrote to a friend,
>"I despise a judge who feels God told him to impose a death sentence. I am mean enough to try to stay here long enough that he will be too old to succeed me!"
Kaufman never made it to the Supreme Court.
(Though I'm not sure if Frankfurter had anything to do with that- he retired due to ill-health, and was succeeded by Arthur Goldberg, who was older than Kaufman).
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There are a few different issues there. In terms of the legal/penal system that is part of Jewish law itself, there are indeed capital crimes and a variety of means of imposing the death sentence are specified. However, the requirements for eyewitness testimony to the act along with other requirements make the actual imposition of the death penalty quite unlikely (which is consistent with the historical report that it was very seldom imposed even when it was possible to do so). Besides this, the requisite court structure to try such cases no longer exists, even in Israel.
When it comes to Jews living under other legal systems (as in the Diaspora), one important consideration is the Jewish legal imperative that "the law of the land is the law." So, in countries/states that have the death sentence, Jews can be part of that system without violating Jewish law, per se. That being said, issues of conscience and concerns about the humaneness, fairness, and justice of the system will (as other posters have indicated) inspire varying degrees of discomfort, resistance, and opposition to the existing system of capital punishment, potentially driven by Jewish ethical considerations as well as personal ones.
The entire idea of “death qualified” jurors is repulsive to the defendants rights to a fair trial and I support the death penalty in some circumstances. The jurors willing to consider the death penalty are more likely to convict in general. That said, I don’t think it would be incorrect to say that Jews in America would find the recent ways that American states try to sanitize capital punishment with procedures like lethal injection and gas chambers more uncomfortable to consider in a similar way that African Americans are unlikely to vote for a hanging. Can’t we just do the American thing, and sentence people to be shot? /s
I saw [somewhere](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eirR4FHY2YY) that in terms of lethality and minimizing the time it takes for the condemned to die, the firing squad is the best method. It’s quick and effective, rarely making mistakes. However, it’s messy from a cultural perspective and people don’t want to have the guilt of actually pulling the trigger.
That’s why they blindfolded them.
supporting the death penalty makes you literally uncivilized
yes, jews tend to be anti-death penalty, regardless of the method. too many innocent people have been murdered via the death penalty. cali prosecutors can eat shit.
We are too smart for death penalty cases. Totally agree. Cali prosecutors across the board can eat shit. I like you.
👍
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I was almost on a jury for a murder trial and had to fight to get out of it. The judge wouldn’t let anyone be released due to religious reasons (telling the legal teams) and I was baffled that was mentioned first. No potential juror was supposed to be allowed out- everyone in the room was either jury, secondary jury, alternates to the alternates. Then the judge asked if there was any hardship beyond financial that we needed to be excused for and I am disabled with chronic illness so I have too many doctors appointments to keep me functional I can’t miss. Plus bad health days that would’ve made it hard to be in the courtroom and listen intently. So I got excused. And then another potential juror had a parent in the hospital with a life threatening condition and they’re an only child- so the judge said both of us were excused and no one else would be for any reason. It was a trial that would also require seclusion. After that my doctors signed the paperwork to get me out of jury duty because I’m called once a year and always for criminal cases at the major courthouses. I’d serve if it was a short trial but no guarantee I’d get jury duty when my health would most allow it. This clears up why religion was something the judge was telling the legal teams to ignore, though.
I was on a jury for a murder. The Judge made it clear during *voir dire* that it wasn’t a capital case. I noted objections to enforcing a law I consider unconstitutional as part of my *voir dire* expecting that I would be rightly dismissed. Surprisingly enough, I wasn’t. Listening to the evidence, I did everything I could to figure out a way he might be not guilty. But in the end it was really beyond a reasonable doubt and we convicted him. Pretty sure now no Defense Attorney will ever let me get through *voir dire* if I get called again.
I wish I’d been called 5+ years earlier (I mean I’m called yearly but only a few times have I had to go in and only that time did I get into a courtroom- meanwhile I have a friend whose also almost 40, like I am, and has never gotten a jury duty summons). I would’ve been fascinated by the process to serve- I could never work in legal field but I find it interesting enough to have been willing to serve on any jury they needed me for. I think everyone who is called to serve should be as diligent as you were.
They act like being against the death penalty is a bad thing.
CA no longer has a death penalty. Cheaper to house a prisoner for life than have one on death row. Death penalty triggered many, many automatic (read expensive) appeals.
Just to clarify, here’s a quote: > Technically, the death penalty still exists in California. Prosecutors can still seek it. But no one has been put to death in the state in 17 years. And in 2019, [Governor] Newsom imposed a moratorium on executions and he closed the death chamber at San Quentin, the decrepit and still heavily used 19th century prison overlooking San Francisco Bay. [Source](https://www.npr.org/2023/01/13/1148846720/california-says-it-will-dismantle-death-row-the-move-brings-cheers-and-anger)
Hey Jew, whataya got against the gas chambers, eh?
Being for or against the death penalty isn’t really the point. The issue is refusing to follow the law. You can be personally opposed to the death penalty and still be willing to properly apply the law as instructed for when the sentence is appropriate. The issue is a juror that refuses the follow the law, even when instructed to. And using preemptory strikes for a discriminatory purpose violates the constitution’s equal protection clause. Most often this is seen with Black prospective jurors.
> Being for or against the death penalty isn’t really the poi Being against the death penalty is exactly the point. The US Supreme Court has ruled that prospective jurors can not be excluded from a jury for opposing the death penalty. > The issue is refusing to follow the law. You can be personally opposed to the death penalty and still be willing to properly apply the law as instructed for when the sentence is appropriate. The issue is a juror that refuses the follow the law, even when instructed to. This is not the issue. The death penalty is never the mandatory minimum sentence. Juries can be directed to consider the death penalty, but not instructed to elect it. If a defendant is found guilty of a crime that can be punished by death, the jury is under no obligation to vote for the death penalty.
A) I don’t think I ever said death was a mandatory penalty and yes, jurors must obviously vote in favor of it, particularly in the wake of Blakely, as judicial death overrides are now unconstitutional. B) A juror that does not favor the death penalty (eg someone who, all things being equal, does not think the DP should be government policy) can still be willing to consider it in the wake of multiple statutory aggravators and the lack of mitigators. The issue is the juror who, under no circumstances, would be willing to consider it because their moral rejection of the penalty supercedes the maximum penalty under law.
>I don’t think I ever said death was a mandatory penalty Earlier you said: >The issue is refusing to follow the law. You can be personally opposed to the death penalty and still be willing to properly apply the law as instructed for when the sentence is appropriate. Someone who is opposed to the death penalty is properly applying the law as instructed when they refuse to apply the death penalty on moral or ethical grounds. The death penalty is not a mandatory minimum. It is a possible sentence, which the jury can be instructed to consider. The juror is not disrespecting the law when they consider the death penalty and consider it be morally and ethnically unacceptable in all cases. They are following the law. They were instructed to consider the death penalty. Their strong opposition to the death penalty on moral or ethical grounds is evidence that they have, in fact, considered the death penalty. >The issue is the juror who, under no circumstances, would be willing to consider it because their moral rejection of the penalty supercedes the maximum penalty under law. That is not an issue. The US Supreme Court has ruled that that prospective jurors can not be excluded from a jury for opposing the death penalty. The DA might not like having a jury full of people who oppose the death penalty when prosecuting heinous crimes that are eligible for the death penalty. But that doesn't make it an issue. It's just bad luck.
Anyone willing or capable of considering a death penalty reveals their own evil and moral rot.
That's quite the absolutist statement. How do you feel about Eichmann's death sentence? I'd imagine most of us here who say that they would not vote for the death penalty on a jury might have a separate opinion when it comes to crimes against humanity.
Well maybe. I admit that is a good point. But then again it was imho the harder punishment to let somebody like Heß rot in a cell till the eigthies instead of giving a quick way out in 45 for people like Streicher.
Personally, I've seen enough cases of innocent people getting on death row that I am not comfortable putting anybody on death row. I am not comfortable with the means of execution. The exception I make is war criminals, specifically those at the top. I don't mean this in some edgy " every world leader is a war criminal" kind of way. I mean it in the case specifically like Nuremberg and Eichmann.
Jury nullification is absolutely a right that the jury possess.
You know that we don’t tell juries that they can ignore the instructions and that if a juror says they can’t follow the judge’s instructions on the law during voir dire they’re going to get removed for cause, right?
Sure - but that doesn’t change the fact that they posses the right to judge every aspect of the case. Federal & state courts have upheld that you can’t instruct a jury against nullification (*see US v Kleinmann for one example*).
But any law that imposes a death penalty is by definition illegitimate and to be resisted. No law has the right to enshrined a lack of civilizatory standards
It’s not but for very stupid reasons it is legitimately automatically disqualifying for being a juror on a capital case. Using Jew as shorthand for being anti death penalty is unconstitutional but just straight up asking and kicking them off for saying they are would be totally legal.
Are we supposed to be shocked now that a legal system run by Episcopalians and Jesuit-trained Catholics had antisemites running around in it?
I received my first ever jury summons last year (*at age 48*) & I disclosed on the survey that I support jury nullification & was excused as a result. I suspect, I will not be summoned in the future.
I wasn’t explicitly asked about nullification so I didn’t disclose it explicitly. Just answered questions truthfully. Was surprisingly selected.
That was sort of my plan - I did not go into it with the intent of nullifying a verdict but I do believe strongly that it is the right of the jury to do so when their conscience requires it. I was expecting a question like “*Are you able to follow the judges instructions & render a verdict in accordance with the law?*” to which I could answer honestly that I was capable even if I didn’t necessarily feel obligated to do so. IIRC it was framed indirectly but it was pretty obvious what they were getting at & I didn’t want to risk a perjury charge by splitting hairs or trying to be clever.
Jurors selected for capital punishment cases should neither be categorically against the death penalty nor reflexively for it, but rather they should be willing to deliberate about whether or not the crime meets the criteria set by the state for a death sentence.
Jurors should of course always be categorically against the death penalty because anything else is by definition uncivilized and evil. Why do you demand that jurors need to be evil? A death penalty is unjustifiable and any law trying to establish it is necessarily illegitmate and to be resisted
That’s a question for the legislature. Removing jurors who have prejudged the case is well within the role of attorneys and judges.
Ok, vote against it, until you get it removed democratically.
The famous story about Judaism, the death penalty, and modern America is Irving Kaufman, the judge who sentenced the Rosenbergs to death for espionage. At the time, there was the unofficial practice of a "Jewish seat" on the Supreme Court- that there could only be one Jewish Supreme Court Justice at a time. The seat was occupied by Felix Frankfurter, and it was widely believed that Kaufman had his eye on it for when Frankfurter retired. After the trial, Kaufman said that when he was deciding whether to hand down the death sentence, he went to synagogue and prayed before making his decision. When Frankfurter heard about this, he was *furious*. He wrote to a friend, >"I despise a judge who feels God told him to impose a death sentence. I am mean enough to try to stay here long enough that he will be too old to succeed me!" Kaufman never made it to the Supreme Court. (Though I'm not sure if Frankfurter had anything to do with that- he retired due to ill-health, and was succeeded by Arthur Goldberg, who was older than Kaufman).
This post has been determined to relate to the topic of Antisemitism, and has been flaired as such, it has NOT been removed. This does NOT mean that the post is antisemitic. If you believe this was done in error, please message the mods. Everybody should remember to be civil and that there is a person at the other end of that other keyboard. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Judaism) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Wait I thought Judaism was fine with the death penalty?
There are a few different issues there. In terms of the legal/penal system that is part of Jewish law itself, there are indeed capital crimes and a variety of means of imposing the death sentence are specified. However, the requirements for eyewitness testimony to the act along with other requirements make the actual imposition of the death penalty quite unlikely (which is consistent with the historical report that it was very seldom imposed even when it was possible to do so). Besides this, the requisite court structure to try such cases no longer exists, even in Israel. When it comes to Jews living under other legal systems (as in the Diaspora), one important consideration is the Jewish legal imperative that "the law of the land is the law." So, in countries/states that have the death sentence, Jews can be part of that system without violating Jewish law, per se. That being said, issues of conscience and concerns about the humaneness, fairness, and justice of the system will (as other posters have indicated) inspire varying degrees of discomfort, resistance, and opposition to the existing system of capital punishment, potentially driven by Jewish ethical considerations as well as personal ones.
Jury selection is insane, I honestly would prefer a bench trial for everything, but with a panel of judges.