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Boston Marathon Bombing Trial

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Over 1,300 prospective jurors completed questionnaires for a chance to serve on a panel of jurors in Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s Boston Marathon Bombing trial. Of those prospective jurors, the judge presiding over the trial narrowed down the jury pool to just over 250 people through the process of voir dire. By personally interviewing each prospective juror individually, the judge is able to determine which of those jurors are the most qualified and competent to serve on a trial jury. The 250 jury prospects were eventually whittled down to a mere 18, 12 of whom sat on the jury panel for the duration of the trial and 6 of whom were alternates.
The final jurors selected for the trial consisted of 10 women and 8 men, all of whose careers varied as widely as their opinions on the death penalty. The jurors ranged in age from early twenties and thirties up to retirement age. The majority were middle to older aged Americans, mostly of Caucasian descent, however the youngest jury member was of Islamic heritage. The defense protested against the selection of a predominantly white jury, and even attempted to change the venue of the trial by moving it outside of Boston, but to no avail. The prosecution believed each and every juror had been carefully and …show more content…

In my opinion, I believe the jury selection process was conducted fairly and the final jurors selected to serve during the trial were selected properly, however I can also understand the defense’s concerns. Unfortunately, many people are unable to set their personal biases aside when it comes to race. People allow the skin color or religious beliefs of the accused, or the heinousness of the crime to cloud their judgement of the truth rather than let the evidence and witness testimony tell what really

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Something to Fight For “This gentleman chose to stand alone against us” (Rose 240). Juror Eight and Antigone chose the path of the unpopular opinion in the two works Twelve Angry Men and Antigone. These two morally based individuals feel they have a civil duty to uphold to the person whom they are defending. The jurors of Twelve Angry Men are faced with deciding the fate of a teenager who supposedly shot his father. Antigone, Haemon, and Creon are to choose with whom their loyalty resides--the State or the gods.

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Traditionally the court has decided that a jury size of a criminal case shall be comprised of twelve members. Although a specific number is not identified within the Sixth Amendment the court in 1898 declared that under constitutional law, it is a requirement that all juries are made up of exactly twelve people. The set number of a jury can date all the way back to the 1300’s were a trial was always concluded with twelve members of the jury (Linder, last visited Mar 30, 2018). The tradition of a twelve person jury was first analyzed and concluded in the case of Williams v. Florida, 399 U.S. 78 (1970).

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Twelve Angry Men is in many ways a love letter to the American legal justice system. We find here eleven men, swayed to conclusions by prejudices, past experience, and short-sightedness, challenged by one man who holds himself and his peers to a higher standard of justice, demanding that this marginalized member of society be given his due process. We see the jurors struggle between the two, seemingly conflicting, purposes of a jury, to punish the guilty and to protect the innocent. It proves, however, that the logic of the American trial-by-jury system does work.

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On April 15, 2013, in Boston, Massachusetts the Boston Marathon Bombing occurred during a marathon which was a very devastating day in the United States , there was also two bombs that went off close to the finish line. Also, the Marathon is always held during Patriots’ day to honor the war. The Boston Marathon Bombing injured around two hundred sixty-four people and the explosion of the bomb killed three civilians also, there were fourteen people who were amputated. The bombing had two suspects both who were brothers and later on in 2012 their family emigrated to the United States. The Boston Marathon Bombing was a huge event throughout the whole United States and maybe the whole world.

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The jury system continued to evolve over a period of time and eventually the United States Constitution was written to govern the jury system. The Sixth and Seventh Amendments stated that we should have 12 members and the cases were to be resolved upon a unanimous verdict (Landsman & Holderman2010). In the 1970’s the court approved juries of 12 or fewer and a non-unanimous verdict in civil cases in federal court cases. Since the evolution of the judicial system it has become easier to get jurors to come to court to do their civil duty. A list is compiled of selected jurors from voter registration and driver’s license information from the state (United States Courts, n.d.).

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Leadership and roles are depicted throughout the whole movie by many different jurors. The designated leader of the jury group was Juror #1. Juror #1 was when they first entered into the room but Juror #8 took the emergent role when he declined to agree with a guilty verdict. His rejection to agree in a guilty verdict was crucial since he voiced his uncertainty to the evidence at a early stage.

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Although some measures are taken to prevent this, many jurors are still prejudiced toward certain subjects and unable make a justified decision. It is said that bringing ordinary citizens into the world of court and law will help them be able to understand the justice system and teach them how to make a candid and unbiased decision. However, most of the jurors that are chosen do not possess the knowledge and experience necessary in order to reach a neutral and equitable verdict with the information and time given.(counter-argument) Many juries have made many controversial decisions such as the infamous OJ Simpson murder case. The jury acquitted the defendant, but many believe that the jury was biased.

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In this paragraph, the advantages and disadvantages of trial by jury will be discussed. The main advantages are that juries introduce community values into the legal process and can influence the system (Joyce, 2013); they can achieve a sense of equity and fairness without enforcing unjust laws; in addition, juries are independent and neutral (Davies, 2015). Moreover, they guarantee participation from the public in a democratic institution (Hostettler, 2004), and represent the population thanks to the randomness with which jurors are decided (Davies, 2015). On the other hand, the most important disadvantages are that jurors have no prior contact with the courts, no training (Hostettler, 2004) and therefore they lack knowledge of law, courtroom proceedings (Joyce, 2013), and lack of ability to understand the legal directions (Thomas, 2010). Moreover, they must face evidence which is highly technical (Hostettler, 2004).

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