Restore the Old Republic [LWN.net]

Restore the Old Republic

Posted Dec 9, 2005 17:40 UTC (Fri) by giraffedata (guest, #1954)
In reply to: Restore the Old Republic by jmorris42
Parent article: Linux in a binary world... a doomsday scenario

The civil judgement against OJ clearly violated Amendment 7 (A jury decided he didn't kill his ex, so a later ruling he was liable for the death clearly violated.)

I have to correct a common misstatement that makes people misunderstand the OJ case: A jury did not decide he didn't kill his ex. Jurors said in interviews after the trial that they thought he did. (And who wouldn't?). Jurors were instructed to decide whether the prosecutor had proved, and done so beyond a reasonable doubt, that OJ killed his ex. Someone can fail to prove something even if it is true. And someone can believe something but still reserve reasonable doubts.

Not that this matters to your argument. The Double Jeopardy clause of the 7th Amendment doesn't say two trials can't come to different conclusions; it says there can't even be a second trial.

I can see that you aren't terribly open to alternative ways of viewing things (so you must really hate lawyers), but lots and lots of smart people believe that the fact tried in OJ's first trial was not the same fact that was tried in the second. And I believe the folks who wrote the Bill Of Rights would say they believed that too.

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Restore the Old Republic

Posted Dec 10, 2005 22:24 UTC (Sat) by jmorris42 (guest, #2203) [Link] (1 responses)

> I can see that you aren't terribly open to alternative ways of viewing
> things (so you must really hate lawyers), but lots and lots of smart
> people believe that the fact tried in OJ's first trial was not the same
> fact that was tried in the second.

Yes I do hate laywers, they are a wicked and depraved subspecied that devolved from H. Sapiens about a hundred years ago. ;) But that is beside the point.

As a matter of fact I'm convinced OJ did indeed kill those people, but unless I am ready to declare a revolution and attempt to replace our form of Government, the basic responsibilities of Citizenship require certain things of me. One of those is respecting the verdicts of juries, and a jury of OJ's peers duly declared him to be "Not Guilty" and that has to be that as far as any legally binding decisions. That verdict should have been more than enough to end the civil trial. Simply submit the verdict from the criminal court and the judge should have brought the case to an end with "OJ didn't kill em, he therefore cannot be liable for these deaths. Period, full stop."

YOu can't 'have other ways of viewing' these things, you either respect our system of justice and abide by it's verdicts or you don't, viewing it as just a system to be gamed for benefit. Now I would like to see the system improved, so obvious mistakes like OJ's case happen less often, but that is an entirely different matter from saying I reserve the right to ignore court rulings I don't like.

(And yes I do reserve that right to ignore the system, but as overt acts of Civil Disobediance in which I accept the possibility of prosecution and even punishment.)

Restore the Old Republic

Posted Dec 11, 2005 19:09 UTC (Sun) by giraffedata (guest, #1954) [Link]

I must repeat that the first OJ jury did not say that OJ didn't kill 'em.

I didn't bring it up before because I assumed that someone who can cite the Constitution would be aware of this one crucial difference between a criminal verdict and a civil one in US law, but since you haven't mentioned it, I'm starting to doubt it: Standard of proof.

In a criminal trial the jury must find "beyond a reasonable doubt and to a moral certainty" that the facts supporting conviction are true. In a civil trial the jury must merely find that the facts supporting the plaintiff are proven by "a preponderance of the evidence," i.e. it's more likely than not that they're true.

It makes plenty of sense that there are two standards. In a criminal trial, the defendant has much to lose and the People little to lose if the verdict is wrong. In a civil trial, each side has an equal amount to lose.

It may interest you to know that the double-trial thing doesn't happen in the opposite direction. If you take a criminal conviction verdict into a civil trial, the judge will consider it essentially conclusive proof; he won't even bother to ask a civil jury about those facts. That's because if it's proven beyond a reasonable doubt, then it's also proven by a preponderance of the evidence.