Another gripping day of showing up at jury duty and not getting selected. And it was a domestic violence case this time. It seemed like it would be much more compelling than larceny under $100. But since I'd rather go back to work than listen to the responding officer's testimony, I suppose I'll never know how it turned out. That is of course unless I look the case up.
Like two weeks ago, the prosecution asked the jury pool if anyone watched CSI, an obvious indication of the significance of the CSI Effect. Tragically, most people don't realize that testimony is perfectly valid evidence since jurors are the ones charged with determining if someone is telling the truth or not. And frankly, most witnesses in most cases have no reason to not tell the truth. Testimony is often the only evidence and it is always the most common type of evidence since it takes testimony to introduce other evidence anyway.
I often say that people are unreliable. Specifically, I mean that peoples' perceptions of reality are often inaccurate either through the personal bias or through the fog of memory. I see it a lot at work, especially when people are angling to prove a point about who is responsible (read: at fault) for some particular non-conformance (read: utter screw up). Or to simply inject a little bit of hyperbole into the story for the sake of drama/comedy/awesomeness (ahem Scott). Nonetheless, witness testimony doesn't need to prove beyond all doubt, just beyond a reasonable doubt. And let's be honest, there are not vast conspiracies working to plot against most people, just against me.
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