What percentage of jury trials are unclear verdicts at start, vs cases where defended really should have plead for lesser charges? My, limited, understanding of the US legal system is that pretty much everyone will be offered a plea bargain before going to trial. That would imply to me that the only people that end up in trial are either people who's case is truly ambiguous and it's not clear which way the the jury will vote, or people who probably should have accepted a plea bargain and stubbornly refused to. So I'm wondering from those who have experience of jury trials how many fall into the former category and how many into the latter? How likely is it that you have a good idea which way the jury will vote before the trial even starts?
Without being omniscient, it is impossible to pin down an exact percentage, and there are a lot of context specific reasons why some kinds of &quot;easy&quot; cases are more likely to go to trial than others. But, there have been quite a few serious efforts to answer this question with data (putting aside the normative issue of whether you should go to trial when you are likely to lose). One of the best statistical estimates comes from an analysis of criminal jury trials in Sarasota, Florida and the race of the jurors on the jury pool. Based upon that study, it is possible to infer statistically that an average juror of either race would reach the same aquittal or conviction decision in about 55% of cases involving black defendants and about 68% of cases involving white defendants. But, there are many other cases that are close enough on the merits given the likely available that the outcome depends upon the race of the jury, which basically means that the evidence can be reasonably viewed in different lights to reach different conclusions based upon your predispositions before seeing it. For the sample as a whole, about 68% of cases where convictions results and a minimum of 14% of cases that produce acquittals, are sufficiently clear than the racial composition of the jury doesn't matter. Given that something like 90% of cases produce plea bargains generally, and that plea bargains are usually made before a jury pool is drawn, the random impact of the racial makeup of the jury pool that is selected for a case in Sarasota, Florida only directly matters in about 2% of all criminal prosecutions. My criminal procedure professor from law school made one of the most comprehensive surveys of data pertinent to estimating wrongful conviction rate ever prepared. He concludes that wrongful conviction rates for murders and rapes are on the order of 2.3%-5%, and that wrongful conviction rates for other serious felonies are probably somewhat lower (since weak cases are less often pursued) but that it is harder to determine precisely what error rate is involved since the legal process and civic activism rarely takes the time and resources necessary to consider wrongful juvenile convictions or wrongful convictions for less serious crimes. Other sources have suggested that wrongful conviction cases, and studies comparing jury outcomes with conclusions of the presiding judges in the cases regarding where the jury does and does not agree with the judge regarding the correct outcome generally speaking point to a similar level of uncertainty in decision making accuracy. suggest that as many as 10-20% of jury determinations are erroneous, although this is to some extent a product of samples biased for cases with a high risk of wrongful convictions. For example, analysis of a special set of state court cases in 2000-01 from four jurisdictions in a study by the National Center for State Courts (Hannaford-Agor et al 2003) suggested that approximately 17% of jury verdicts were inaccurate, 7% of the all jury verdicts were wrongful convictions and 10% of all jury verdicts were wrongful acquittals, with corresponding rates of 10% wrongful convictions and 1% wrongful acquittals for the judges' verdicts (Spencer 2007). Similarly, an abstract of one study stated that: &quot;I examine . . . how the criminal system in the United States handled the cases of people who were subsequently found innocent through post-conviction DNA testing. . . . The leading types of evidence supporting their wrongful convictions were erroneous eyewitness identifications, faulty forensic evidence, informant testimony, and false confessions. . . . . few innocent appellants brought claims regarding those facts, nor did many bring claims alleging their innocence. For those who did, hardly any claims were granted by appellate courts. . . . courts often denied relief by finding error to be harmless on account of the appellant's guilt. Criminal appeals brought before they proved their innocence using DNA yielded apparently high numbers of reversals—a fourteen percent reversal rate. However, . . . the reversal rate is indistinguishable from the background rate in appeals of comparable rape and murder convictions[.]&quot; Another way to judge the ratio of easy to hard cases is to look at conviction or verdict rates in cases that go to trial. While the vast majority of criminal charges brought result in conviction of something and the vast majority of civil cases brought result in a judgment for the Plaintiff, in an hypothetical ideal world where the lawyers and parties on both sides of cases are rational actors with the best available information and there is no bias in the availability of information, you would expect pre-trial settlements to resolve, on average, all of the cases with an objective lean one way or the other, leaving only the cases that are, on average, coin flips left to go to trial, with 50-50 outcomes, regardless of the mix of cases originally filed. And, that model isn't horrible. Less than 2% of civil cases and less than 10% of criminal cases go to trial. Civil case outcomes vary by type of case, but the overall result in those the go to trial is close to 50-50. But, in criminal cases, convictions greatly outnumber acquittals, because &quot;easy cases&quot; where a conviction is likely often still go to trial, because neither side is paying for their lawyers from their own funds in most cases, because there is little incentive to offer favorable settlements in close cases, and because, as discussed below, there is a significant irreducible risk of an inaccurate outcome. In federal criminal cases that actually go to trial, the Pew Research Center’s data shows that defendants who pursue a trial experience different outcomes based on whether they choose a bench or jury trial. The acquittal rate in bench trials is 38% (a very small and unrepresentative sample), whereas it’s 14% for juried trials (the vast majority of cases). This would suggest that about 72% of federal jury trials are &quot;easy&quot; cases, while about 28% are &quot;hard&quot; cases, in line with the Sarasota study in order of magnitude. Note that this is different from &quot;conviction rates&quot; which compare the percentage of cases charged that produce guilty verdicts or plea bargains, rather than conviction rates in the subset of cases that go to trial. The percentage of people charged with some federal crime who end up being convicted of something is very, very high, compared to state court, but that is almost entirely due to the ability of federal prosecutors to cherry pick strong cases with high mandatory minimum penalties and to secure plea bargains as a result, rather than from different rates of criminal jury trial outcomes. Still, in &quot;2018, the Bureau of Justice Statistics reported that among defendants charged with a felony, 68% were convicted (59% of a felony and the remainder of a misdemeanor)&quot; and the conviction rate at trial is lower than the conviction rate of all people charged criminally with felonies, since plea bargains are more common than unilateral government dismissals of all charges. But, in almost every court system, more than 50% of criminal trials result in convictions. So, the percentage of &quot;easy&quot; criminal cases going to trial in state courts is still significantly lower than in federal courts. Maybe the percentage of state criminal cases going to trial that are &quot;easy cases&quot; in the range of 5%-20% in this kind of analysis (which is quite a bit lower than the more rigorously designed Sarasota study). The challenging thing, of course, is knowing in advance which cases judges or juries will get wrong. I typically conceptualize the issue as a certain irreducible uncertainty of outcome any time you actually roll the dice on going to trial on the order of 10%-20% whether you are in front of a judge or a jury, and an additional uncertainty in cases where there is some specific reason to think that the outcome is a close call, or that special risk factors for inaccurate verdicts (like heavy reliance on cross-racial eye witness identification of suspects) is present. From the perspective a client, even in a seemingly secure case, this impacts how plea bargains and settlement offers are evaluated. If your client is actually in the wrong and facing very severe punishment and there are no offers to settle that don't also involve very severe punishment, going to trial and hoping to benefit from the irreducible inaccuracy of trial determinations can be rational even in a quite weak case. Likewise, in either a civil or a criminal case, if getting some win is much more important for the person bringing the case, than getting a &quot;home run&quot; maximal win, making a lenient deal even in a fairly solid case can make sense to avoid the risk of rolling the dice and the irreducible risk of error any time there is a trial. Also, of course, lots and lots of parties to both criminal and civil cases are not rational actors and make bad decisions. These characteristics of parties to legal cases frequently play a large part in the fact that these parties ended up having to deal with the legal system in the first place. One of the difficult systemic and institutional issues, however, is that the behavior of people who are irrational because they are dumb or crazy, and the behavior of people in the system who are innocent and have excessive but not necessarily unreasonable trust in the accuracy of the judicial process, can look very similar. People who are factually innocent systemically insist on going to trial even in the face of lenient plea bargains at rates much higher than people who are factually guilty, even in cases that seem to have identical strength before a neutral third-party, and are, as a result, over represented in the ranks of people who actually go to trial.
Legally and safely? Have a good and true reason for being excused, and hope the judge accepts it. If being on a jury would somehow cause you legitimate hardship, you may be excused. If you're a felon, and haven't had your rights restored, many courts won't even let you sit on a jury. Don't "pretend" anything, though. If you intentionally deceive the court in order to avoid jury duty -- or, where it's possible, even to get onto a particular jury -- that is illegal in probably every court that has a concept of jury duty.
Could DA Bragg have only charged Trump with 34 misdemeanor counts, without elevating the charges to felonies? Yes. if Trump's defense team argues that the law that elevates the misdemeanor charges to felony charges does not apply in this case, because the elevation option does not include federal laws, then since this is a matter of law and not a matter of fact, Judge Mercan (rather than the jury) will decide whether or not to dismiss the felony charges? Yes. Does Judge Mercan have the option of dismissing the felony enhancement but allowing the misdemeanor charges to proceed, or would Mercan have to dismiss all charges against Trump? Judge Mercan could probably choose either option if he found that the original charges were not supported by the law. There is law regarding how this decision is made but I personally don't know that area of law well. One of the reason that I am unfamiliar with it is that it is exceedingly rare for a judge to conclude that the prosecutor's charges are not supported by the law. I would be very surprised if that judge reached that conclusion in this case, in particular, because both federal election law violations and state and federal tax law violations are implicated by the indictment. The DA no doubt legally researched this issue exhaustively before presenting the charges to the grand jury and has made out a prima facie case for a felony under the applicable New York State law. If Trump is brought to trial, then would it be possible for a jury to return a verdict that Trump was guilty of the misdemeanor offenses of falsifying business records but innocent of doing so with an intent to commit another crime? If so, then could Trump still be found guilty of the misdemeanors, or would he be fully acquitted, since the jury ruled that he was not guilty of the exact charges that DA Bragg filed? Whether a jury is presented with a lesser included offense charge at the request of the defense, is partially a matter of the prosecution's election to make that option available or not, and partially a matter of the judge's decision on how to handle it. The body of law involved in how this decision is handled on a case by case basis is quite involved. Most of the case law involves homicide cases, assault cases, and property crime cases where there are charges with are identical except for aggravating factors for the most serious charges. But, lesser charges generally aren't presented if based upon the evidence presented at trial, either the more serious charge is established or no charge is proven. For example, if the defendant presents an alibi defense, and a witness whose credibility is disputed places the defendant at the scene intentionally committing a crime, a lesser included offense charge would not be appropriate. But, if the defendant admits hitting a pedestrian and causing the pedestrian's death, but claims that the pedestrian was at fault in the accident for jay walking, while the prosecution alleges that the pedestrian was intentionally struck as part of a mafia hit, multiple lesser included offenses would probably be charged involving different levels of intent of premeditated intent/aggravated circumstances killing (first degree murder), to a knowing killing (second degree murder), to a reckless killing (manslaughter), to a criminally negligent homicide or vehicular homicide charge. Typically, the decision on this point would not be made until all evidence was received and the judge in a hearing away from the jury but in the presence of the prosecutors and defense counsel crafted jury instructions based upon the evidence presented at trial and the arguments raised by counsel at trial.
If 'literally 300' attorneys declined your case on the basis of a phone call, without looking into the details, I can see three options: You are unable to communicate the nature of your case clearly. In this posting, you mentioned complaints against a company, a municipality, and a landlord, plus being evicted. Focus on explaining one case. If you think you 'know for a fact' that you have several big payouts coming, there is the first problem. Nobody knows what a jury will decide. An attorney might hesitate to work for a client who does not understand this. Litigation is always a risk. All your cases actually lack merit, a lawyer sees this and you do not. Not knowing the cases, I cannot tell. (And no, you should not explain them in detail on the web. If they do have merit, posting your strategy hurts the cases.) Your state has a vexatious litigant list and you are on it. That would not prevent an attorney from taking your case, but it might make them hesitate.
The jury never finds there was “no crime” They either find that the state has proven that this particular defendant committed this particular crime (guilty) or they have not proven it (not guilty). Another jury at another time may find the opposite - this does sometimes happen where a guilty verdict is appealed and the appeals court orders a retrial. For another defendant charged with a different crime (e.g. accessory to the first crime) before another jury, the result of another trial is both irrelevant and inadmissible.
A series of answers were proposed to similar questions in the world building forum. https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/29880/how-could-a-legal-system-whose-punishments-were-based-off-of-level-of-certainty https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/29941/how-to-handle-plea-bargains-in-a-court-where-punishment-is-based-off-confidence The relationship to plea bargaining is as follows: When the prosecution has a strong case with a high probability of winning, it insists on going to trial and will make only slight concessions relative to the result that could be obtained at trial. When the prosecution has a case of typical strength with an intermediate chance of winning, it will normally make a significant concession in the severity of the offense charged or other agreements that impact the length of the sentence, relative to the result that would be obtained if the prosecution fully prevails at trial, rather than "roll the dice" and usually the defense will agree in exchange for a more lenient sentence. When the prosecution has a case that is weak (but being ethical, believes that there is probable cause to support), it will normally make very deep concessions such as agreeing to a much less severe charge or for example to probation or a deferred judgment, to at least impose some punishment, in order to avoid going to trial, even when the potential punishment if the prosecution full prevails is very high. Plea bargaining rates in the federal system are in the mid- to high 90%s, while plea bargaining rates in state systems are often in the 70% to 90% range (federal prosecutors can leave weaker cases to state prosecutors if they want to and have a stiff hammer due to high mandatory minimum sentences for many offenses and the sentencing guidelines, but state and local prosecutors have to take what their less elite law enforcement officers come up with). At trial, prosecutors typically win convictions well over 50% of the time (although not too much more, because the more clear cases are either dismissed by prosecutors as unproveable prior to trial or are plea bargained). The net effect of the current system is that the severity of the sentence imposed in the vast majority of cases is proportional to the probability of the prosecution prevailing at trial times the likely sentence if it does prevail, as evaluated mutually by the prosecution and the defense. When there is not a sufficient consensus on the fair sentence in light of those factors the rare trial happens (and more often than not the defense rather than the prosecution overestimates its chances). Unfortunately, this also means that the biggest penalties for going to trial are in the weakest cases in which the prosecution just barely manages to convince the jury and there is a strong probability that the defendant is actually innocent, as opposed to the cases where it is fairly clear that the defendant is guilty. And, people who are actually innocent of everything are most likely to roll the dice and go to trial, since people who are guilty of something know that in any fair resolution that are going to face the significant downsides of having any criminal conviction on their record, while people who are actually innocent may reasonably (although sometimes inaccurately) believe that the system will protect them and allow them to escape all consequences except the costs of defending themselves in court (if they can afford it). Another option that prosecutors have in a case where proof beyond a reasonable doubt may be difficult or impossible, is to bring a civil lawsuit or to seek an administrative penalty, which may result in loss of a licenses or payment of a fine or compensation, rather than bringing criminal charges. In these cases, the prosecution only has to prove a case by a preponderance of the evidence in most cases, and usually, the defendant has no right to an attorney at public expense even if the defendant is indigent. These fines (or civil forfeitures) can also help fund the criminal justice system that pays prosecutors and other participants in the process. Below that standard, prosecutors can seek search warrants, wire taps and arrest warrants in cases where there is merely probable cause to believe that a person committed a crime, which in addition to setting up future prosecutions can also be used as a form of punishment/harassment of someone prosecutors believe to be guilty of a crime even though they may not even have the evidence necessary to prove a civil suit, but the amount of impact that a search warrant, wire tap, or arrest can have on a suspect is much less than a full blowed prosecution.
No. Indonesia Law uses Civil Law structures which use an Inquisitorial Trial. The chief difference is that in the United States (which has a Common Law Structure) the judge usually does not decide the case, but interprets the law (Trier of Law) and with a few exceptions, will determine the sentence once guilt is found. The Jury decides the case (Trier of Fact) and pronounces guilt (It is the right of the defense to request a Bench Trial, which gives the Judge both roles. The prosecution cannot object to this request). In a Civil Court, the big difference is that their is no Jury and the Judge has both roles (Trier of Law, and Trier of Fact). As the name suggests, rather than two sides fighting each other (adversarial), the two sides are answering questions posed to them by the Judge or usually a panel of Judges are used and the Judge may initiate further investigation in the evidence. The United States does use Inquisitional Trials from time to time, but they are often seen in misdemeanors, traffic courts, and small claims courts. The latter is a popular daytime TV genre (think Judge Judy) while misdemeanors and traffic court decisions are often time funny and make great Youtube videos. There are not many great Adversarial media as many throw out rules for time sake (real U.S. trials have many long boring periods during testimony) and story/drama sake. I would recommend "My Cousin Vinny" which was written by two lawyers who were fed up with Hollywood messing up how court room drama works and is hilarious to boot. When viewing either, take them with a grain of salt.
"If it were not assize-time, I would not take such language from you." (said while grabbing the handle of sword) This is a famous conditional threat where the speaker/actor was not found to express intent to do harm; perhaps better called a negative condition. This probably confuses matters but if you are to search for more answers this could be a good place to start. One of the elements of common law assault is that the threat must be able to be carried out immediately; it must be imminent. I do not have a cite for this but I recall that this means that conditional threats are excluded from assault. So calling a politician on the phone and telling them that if they do not drop out of a race you will hurt them is not assault. So, "You cut that out now or you’ll go home in an ambulance" sounds a lot like, "stop or you will get hurt." The victim has the opportunity to avoid the danger; the threat is not imminent. But the facts here are interesting because the speaker touched the victim while speaking which might mean fear of imminent was real. But they were in a crowded room in front of cameras - could the victim really feel that threat was imminent? Plus, the "you will go home" implies a future harm. Oh, and the speaker does not say "I will hurt you," maybe she was actually trying to protect the victim from someone else's actions. Like when my teacher knew someone was waiting outside the classroom to fight me and she told me, "if you go out there you will get hurt!" I would hope that a jury would consider this hard bargaining.