So suppose you could go into a time machine and bet on the verdicts. You have the nuts. Except that the trials that you now know the results of, have switched lawyers in both cases. What price would you lay that the basic results stay the same?

I had no idea about the lawyers in this case but would have ripped Deuce's McCracken's hand off if he had been serious about betting on them to walk. Would happily take the same bet with Rittenhouse's lawyers defending, even after they got Rittenhouse off. Save for outright incompetence or malfeasance on either side, the facts of the case are far more important in determining the outcome than the lawyers, IMO.

Totally fair justice system we have here.

Why don't you read the stickers on the side of your medication bottles? You are clearly not taking the correct dosages.

Mine just says if the condition persists for more than 4 hours to consult my doctor.

Most of the best lawyering occurs pre-trial.

If you were to switch the lawyers in this case, the outcome would have been more-or-less the same. If the third guy had Johnny Cochran as his lawyer, he probably could have had a better outcome, but I don't think it would have worked out for the first two guys regardless of anything.

In perhaps 2/3 of all cases, the evidence is so lopsided that the outcome is more or less determined as long as there are reasonably competent lawyers on both sides. The rest of the cases are dependent on who has the better lawyer.

you are a lawyer and you sit here and act like the justice system and this country is perfect. and yet it gets shown over and over how effed up it is.

a big difference between us is that I can admit when I am wrong. you cant accept that anything about the USA is ever wrong. bc your identity requires it that way.

yep nothing to see here. the system works. anyone who says otherwise clearly needs medication.

Is Victor the Liar at it again? Maybe. Let's find out:

At what point did DonkJr "sit here and act like the justice system and this country is perfect."

Please cite a specific post or posts. Thanks.

When did you admit that you were wrong about the outcome of the Arbery murder trial? Please cite a specific post or posts. Thanks.

How did you infer the above from his post? He literally said that about 1/3rd of cases are determined by lawyering.

You must be sleep deprived; you make no sense.

I don't know exactly where I would put the odds, but the juries were the same as in the original trials, I think the state in the Rittenhouse case would be a modest underdog and the state in the Arbery case would be an overwhelming favorite.

In other words, I think the true odds in the new trial would be very close to the true odds in the original trials.

If you say so. But that just means that these two cases were not good examples of the main point I was making. Lawyers and jury consultants can change too many decisions if their counterparts are less skilled (although I can't believe that its one third of the cases as Donkjr suggests.) There should be professional juries that can ask questions. That would eliminate consultants and lessen the impact of lawyers skillful in the art of persuading lay jurors.

I think he was being sarcastic. If its anywhere near 1/3 its unfair and unacceptable. Moreso because the poor would almost always have less skilled lawyering,

She looks like she has dirty toe nails.

Yup. And violating the Oath of office is a serious crime both State and Federally but the system hates to eat their own in this way thus it is pursued so rarely.

This statute would seem almost a slam dunk to get Trump with in so many instances (Ukraine call, Georgia Elections calls, etc) but again ultimately those in power really don't want to take down others in power. I give you a pass now since you need it and you give me, or those around me one in the future if we need it.

McCarthy and the GOP have been trying to signal as loudly as possible that the old hand shake deal may be off due to Dem prosecutions and them breaking the mostly agreed to pact, in these type of indiscretions.

Even Obama stuck to the pact with his BS, 'we must look forward but not back' reasoning to not go after anyone around the Wall Street 2008 debacle. He knew that what would start as a trickle would end up as a fire hose as each Wall Street exec started pointing fingers at unrelated crimes to try and reduce their own sentences. It literally could have taken down much of Wall Street and then the Politicians who associate with them. As SDNY requires you disclose all criminality you have seen or touched in any area for your plea deal to be protected.

FWIW, the number could very well be higher than 1/3. The number that a highly skilled and prominent attorney gave us once was higher than that, when he was giving a presentation on this exact topic. He said the middle 50% of cases depend on "who has the better lawyer" (his words). In my personal experience, that number is a little high, but I certainly have not been an attorney anywhere near as long as he had been.

When it comes to cases that actually go to trial, the number is much higher than 1/3 or 1/2. The vast majority of cases that are terrible for one side or the other are not typically going to go to trial. If there is a rock-solid alibi, a prosecutor will usually drop the case well before it is tried. If the police legally raid your house and the only things inside are you and 500 marijuana plants, you are very likely to plead guilty. There are some instances where a terrible case for one side goes to trial anyway, such as when there is political pressure on the state or when the defendant doesn't have much else to lose by going to trial (such as when there is a mandatory life sentence regardless of plea bargaining), but I'd say those instances are in the minority of cases actually tried.

Professional jurors might work in some places in the world, but I think it would be mostly a disaster in the U.S. Allowing jurors, professional or otherwise, to ask questions of witnesses strikes me as a terrible idea.

There is considerable unevenness in litigation outcomes, and that's undesirable on some level. But it isn't remotely the case that this unevenness is mostly attributable to the lawyering. The lawyering is certainly a factor. But people are underweighting sheer randomness, jury composition, and the effect of dispositive or evidentiary rulings in close cases (which are sometimes a function of the quality of the lawyering and sometimes not). In certain types of practices, it is not unusual for the same plaintiff's lawyers to go to trial against the same defense lawyers on identical theories and very similar facts and get different results from one trial to the next.

In AZ, jurors are allowed to ask questions of any witness. They are submitted in writing to the judge and then inappropriate questions are weeded out.

Lawyering skill plus jury picking skill plus jury randomness, sure seems to argue for the guilt deciders being smarter, more educated, and less able to be psychologically manipulated than what we have now.

Also I would think that lawyering skill plays a part in plea bargaining as well. Not just because the better lawyer is usually a better negotiator but also because the opposing attorney is more worried about turning an offer down and going to trial against that particular opponent.

So how can that be a system considered just?

i

I'd be curious to understand what the limits are. But I guess anything can work if you require that it be blessed in advance by the court.

You seem to think that psychological manipulation of juries is a big part of trial practice. I guess it depends on how you define psychological manipulation. Good trial lawyers are well-spoken. They are organized. They are efficient. They present complicated information and timelines in a way that it easy to digest.

I don't think of those skills as tools for psychological manipulation, unless persuasion and psychological manipulation are indistinguishable.

The three motive-appeals of persuasion in classical rhetoric are pathos (pity), ethos (ethics) and logos (logic). I would assume that the best lawyers can size up a jury and determine which motive-appeals, and in what proportions, would be most effective in delivering the desired outcome.

Kinda like any good advertising firm.