An interesting epistemological observation, to be sure, but jury-worthy?
Robert Weisberg teaches criminal law at Stanford Law School, and he immediately wonders what it meant when juror B37 asserted that “You never get all the information. How do you form an opinion if you don’t have all the information?” Weisberg sums up his lawyerly concerns in one sentence: “She thinks the world is one big reasonable doubt.”
Gail Brashers-Krug, a former federal prosecutor and law professor, is currently a criminal defense attorney in Iowa. She also jumped back when B37 said, ”You never get all the information.“ “That’s exactly what a defense attorney loves to hear,” says Brashers-Krug. “That’s reasonable doubt, right there. If I were a prosecutor, that would make me extremely nervous about her.” She adds that B37’s devotion to animals might raise flags for her as well. “The animal thing is weird. She doesn’t know how many animals she has, and she mentions her animals far, far more than her two daughters. She strikes me as eccentric and unpredictable. I never, ever want eccentric, unpredictable people on a jury.”
Apart from her use of newspapers, she seems like a total nutter to me. Alyssa reacts to the fact that B37 was, before thinking better of it, shopping around a book proposal:
[T]he larger issue is when B37 decided she had the material for a book on her hands, and how it might have affected her approach to the trial and her influence on other jurors. As literary world guru Ron Hogan wrote in a series of Tweets “If Zimmerman had been found guilty, Juror B37′s book plans would almost certainly lead his attorneys to ask the verdict be set aide … There is also the question of what Florida prosecutors could do to Juror B37 if she violated sequestration or was taking notes during trial … There is the possibility of juror misconduct, if she planned anything to do with her book during trial … I’d like to know EXACTLY when Juror B37 settled upon the narrative hook that the “system” & the “spirit” of justice came into conflict.”
That misconduct, if it existed, is shameful, but it can’t lead to a retrial of the case. Whatever motivations B37 consciously or unconsciously brought to deliberations and weighing of evidence have done the damage they were going to do, and there’s no way to rectify it.
The Dish 