{"id":455957,"date":"2021-04-26T13:06:53","date_gmt":"2021-04-26T17:06:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=455957"},"modified":"2021-04-26T13:06:58","modified_gmt":"2021-04-26T17:06:58","slug":"usa-today-worries-about-anonymous-juries-following-chauvin-verdict","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/usa-today-worries-about-anonymous-juries-following-chauvin-verdict\/","title":{"rendered":"USA Today Worries About Anonymous Juries Following Chauvin Verdict"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">18<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fusa-today-worries-about-anonymous-juries-following-chauvin-verdict%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=455957&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/fb_image-3781.jpeg\" class=\"ff-og-image-inserted\"  style=\"display:none\"><\/div>\n<p>Media outlets tried to give the public as much information as possible about the people who would decide former police officer Derek Chauvin\u2019s fate \u2013 an act that will likely be cited by the defense team when trying to appeal the verdict.<\/p>\n<p>Giving so much information about the jury could have led people with a moderate amount of internet sleuthing skills to discover the identities of some of the jurors. Had Chauvin not been found guilty of murdering Minneapolis man George Floyd, that information likely would have been used to punish those jurors for reaching the \u201cwrong\u201d verdict.<\/p>\n<p>Sure, this is just a hypothetical, but given the way the mob reacted \u2013 and had been acting for the past year \u2013 it\u2019s a likely scenario.<\/p>\n<p>Enter USA Today, which published <a href=\"https:\/\/amp.usatoday.com\/amp\/7342909002\">an article<\/a> on Monday claiming anonymous juries are \u201cpart of a growing trend that has some legal experts worried.\u201d The article frontloads the voices of those who don\u2019t want juries to be anonymous, like Gregg Leslie, executive director of the First Amendment Clinic at Arizona State University\u2019s law school.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s been a slow and constant march toward this, and if in the end no one knows who\u2019s on the jury, people can lose faith in the system and see it as a faceless machine,\u201d Leslie told the outlet \u201cProtecting privacy on a blanket basis will undermine the idea of an open and accountable society.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>To be sure, \u201caccountable\u201d is being applied to the jury, a clear indication that members of a jury should be identified so that they can be hounded afterward should the mob not get its way, though I\u2019m sure that\u2019s not what Leslie meant.<\/p>\n<p>It is, however, an unfortunate consequence of today\u2019s society, which is far too invested in trial-by-media, with a verdict decided before any actual trial is started.<\/p>\n<p>Judge Peter Cahill decided it was best to keep the names of Chauvin\u2019s jury away from the public, given the necessary steps taken to turn the courthouse where the trial took place into a \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailywire.com\/news\/minneapolis-courthouse-turned-into-veritable-fortress-ahead-of-george-floyd-murder-trial\">fortress<\/a>\u201d to protect it and those inside from the angry mob outside \u2013 a mob fully expected to violently riot should Chauvin be found not guilty.<\/p>\n<p>Because there is not a portion of the United States guaranteed to burn down cities and loot businesses should they not get their way or be upset by something, full context not needed. It\u2019s not a racial thing \u2013 many of those involved in the riots were white \u2013 but one of people ready and willing to commit crimes based on media misinformation in the early moments of a news story.<\/p>\n<p>As New York defense attorney Scott Greenfield told The Daily Wire, anonymous juries don\u2019t \u201cdeny transparency to the parties, but to the public, for whom the identity of jurors should be absolutely irrelevant.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe only possible cry for transparency is to condemn or harm them afterward for not reaching the verdict the public desires. This is explicitly not how juries should work, crossing the line into illegal jury tampering out of fear of harm at the hands of the outraged mob,\u201d Greenfield added.<\/p>\n<p>I wrote about this issue <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailywire.com\/news\/the-medias-disturbing-intimidation-game\">last week<\/a>, focusing on how the media tried to give as much information as possible about the jurors without revealing their names and addresses. Outlets reported the towns in which the jurors lived, what industries they worked in, and in one case, the type of place one juror liked to hang out. It was enough information for someone with bad motives to discover their identities, and certainly enough information to pressure the jury ahead of their verdict. Maybe the information changed their decisions, as one alternate juror <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailywire.com\/news\/alternate-chauvin-juror-admits-i-was-concerned-about-people-coming-to-my-house-if-they-were-not-happy-with-the-verdict\">admitted<\/a> they were \u201cconcerned about people coming to my house if they were not happy with the verdict.\u201d How many others felt the same way?<\/p>\n<p><em>The Daily Wire is one of America\u2019s fastest-growing conservative media companies and counter-cultural outlets for news, opinion, and entertainment. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a\u00a0<\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailywire.com\/subscribe\"><em>member<\/em><\/a><em>.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Media outlets tried to give the public as much information as possible about the people who would decide former police officer Derek Chauvin\u2019s fate \u2013 an act that will likely &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2276727,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/fb_image-3781.jpeg","fifu_image_alt":"USA Today Worries About Anonymous Juries Following Chauvin Verdict","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-455957","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/fb_image-3781.jpeg","fifu_image_alt":"USA Today Worries About Anonymous Juries Following Chauvin Verdict","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/455957","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=455957"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/455957\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2276727"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=455957"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=455957"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=455957"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}