XOXOXO @anothertearinthesea - Tumblr Blog

unclefather

I think they lock Beyoncé in a room and tell her to read words off a piece of paper because the gays will love it

unclefather

You think Beyoncé knows the queens are in the front and the doms are in the back? She thinks that is someone’s name

rottingfacade

imagine being the first astronomer to see this shit. i would be terrified

onlinecounsellingcollege

“Putting myself first was a quiet thing - soft and certain, a gentle rebellion long overdue.”

— s.r.w.

irawhiti

i literally think of that "polynesians first to discover antarctica, not news to maori" headline so much it's so fucking funny

irawhiti

highly skilled ocean voyagers living close to antarctica who have oral history of heading south and discovering a land full of ice sheets and mountains of ice and snow were first to discover antarctica, not news to said group of people

afewofmyfavoritethingsblr

Yeah we went south but it's cold af down there so our grandparents were like "nah let's go back to the hot islands and just tell our kids this place sucks"

nevershootamockingbird

[ begin id: a screenshot of a headline from nzherald.co.nz. the headline reads "polynesians first to discover antarctica, not news to maori" / end id ]

8-bitfiction

unpunishablewoman

i've never felt young lol i was 14 feeling like a three times divorced woman

sounddesignerjeans-deactivated2

when I was born my grandfather reportedly saw me and said “she’s been here before, and she’s not happy to be back”

theperfectgrl

stay-close

“Until we have seen someone’s darkness, we don’t really know who they are. Until we have forgiven someone’s darkness, we don’t really know what love is.”

— Marianne Williamson

gwyoi

hexpress

ty for stealing this one much appreciated

str0kethebigtree-deactivated202

people in the notes suggesting it was "improper" for the juror to do this or that it "introduced bias" to the court proceeding 🙄 the ice agent in question accused a moc of assaulting him / resisting arrest. how is the agent being a white supremacist not relevant. what universe are you living in

A juror was held in criminal contempt and fined more than $11k for researching his case online. The man, named as Stephen Miele, told other

3fluffies

As a member of the world’s SECOND oldest profession, I assure you this is just one of many ways the justice system is systematically fucked up.

a-method-in-it

For anyone who wants to know how to fact check something you are told while on jury duty without getting fined:

First, you need to understand that the rule that jurors can’t just google things is coming from a good place. Like imagine that you are on a jury that’s considering, say, a medical malpractice lawsuit and one of your fellow jurors comes into the jury room and says to you, “I think the victim’s expert was lying because WebMD totally contradicts everything they said.”

And you might be like, “But WebMD is notoriously unreliable website and the expert you’re talking about is a researcher from Mayo Clinic.” But this person cannot be swayed.

Like, we can all agree that would be bad.

So even though these rules can contribute to unjust outcomes as in the case above (and seriously, the fact that the defense attorney didn’t fact check that is probably grounds for legal malpractice), they also prevent jurors from just looking up bullshit online and taking it more seriously than the actual experts the court has put on. And I think in the era of anti-vaxxers/QAnon/COVID denial/etc., we can all understand why it’s a bad idea to trust that people can tell fact from bullshit online.

So in light of this, how do you as a juror fact check something?

The key here is that you have to ask the court for information. Jurors can ask questions of the court during deliberations, so if something you said sounds off to you, you can ask for more information.

The key term you want to use here is “credibility.”

The job of a jury is to decide what are called “questions of fact.” Long before the trial even starts, lawyers will have hashed out all the “questions of law” --- like, what the statute of limitations is; what laws, exactly, were allegedly broken; whether the court you’re in even has jurisdiction; stuff like that. Jurors are responsible for deciding which side’s version of the facts has more credibility.

For instance, if the prosecution’s witness says X and the defense’s witness says Y, the jury is responsible for deciding which is true, X or Y. And you do this by weighing which one is more credible.

So in this case, if the juror had known to, he could have told the judge, “In order to properly assess the ICE agent’s credibility, I need more information about his tattoo. I have doubts about whether he was telling the truth about it, which would impact how credible I would find his testimony. Can the agent please provide evidence that it really is what he says it is?”

There are a lot of problems with our legal system, and I think one of the biggest is that jurors aren’t educated about what they can and can’t do. Juries have a lot of power, if (and only if) they know how to use it.

lytefoot

Reblogging for that last post, because frankly, “what to do as a juror” is one of those things the schools should really be teaching us. Serving on a jury is one of the most powerful rights of citizenship and everyone should be educated in how to exercise it correctly.

lurker-no-more

🤠🤠🤠🤠

(Link)

your-url-is-problematic

JEWPITER

sulphurdotpng

radiofreederry

Love how this is phrased like it’s an archaeological find

plaguedocboi

Alright was no one going to tell me that in the middle of the Nevada desert is an old cemetery that contains the bodies of a bunch of miners who died in a fire and next door is a haunted clown motel