It’s scary as hell.

We would all be under the impression that Hillary was Mother Theresa and that Al Gore was the subject of Love Story.

I hope that’s a joke.

At least it was a mistrial, it could have been worse. Hopefully they will be a little more probing with jurors this time, maybe have a decent pool of alternates (not sure what the rules on that are in this kind of trial).

Juries are made up of people too stupid to get out of jury duty. That said, if you don’t stand up for yourself, who will? Tell Neal to shove it and carry on.

mojo on December 11, 2007 at 10:45 AM

Too stupid to get out of jury duty? Trying to get dismissed doesn’t always work….

I would guess that Neal lied on the questions he was asked before being selected. I would also guess that the others told the truth, they have no pre-conceived notions on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

I would not be chosen because I would say I support Israel, HLF lawyers would remove me.

WoosterOh on December 11, 2007 at 2:22 AM

Yeah thats what I was thinking, I know I wouldn’t have been chosen… This guy Neal had his mind made up before he even went in the room. He was obviously already sympathetic to Hamas

WoosterOh on December 11, 2007 at 2:22 AM

If that was a question, I would have to say the same. I would like to think I could be objective, but faced with someone like Neal, I probably would have gone against whatever the heck he said just because he was a jerk.

That said, I think Neal is the typical leftist elitist. The lady was no dummy. She paid attention and knew what she was talking about.

I would not be chosen because I would say I support Israel, HLF lawyers would remove me.

RushBaby on December 11, 2007 at 12:31 AM

I noticed that. Look how long it has taken for the media to learn how to pronounce Ahmadinejad – and some still can’t.

She didn’t even hesitate while pronouncing the names of the defendants. From the pundits, analysts, and junkies you expect that. It’s spooky to hear a citizen who could be your neighbor or mine just rattle off those names with such familiarity.

RushBaby on December 11, 2007 at 12:31 AM

Too bad she won’t be on the second jury.

Connie on December 10, 2007 at 9:56 PM

Way to go. Love that!

I’ll take Ms. Williams account of the whole thing. She didn’t seem stupid when she was talking about the case. As she said, she took a lot of notes during the whole trial.

mram on December 10, 2007 at 10:29 PM

She didn’t even hesitate while pronouncing the names of the defendants. From the pundits, analysts, and junkies you expect that. It’s spooky to hear a citizen who could be your neighbor or mine just rattle off those names with such familiarity.

I think the biggest outrage I have here, is the type of juror selected to hear a case like this. These people appear to be morons. I think you should have basic literacy, and an interest in civics, current events, and history to participate in a jury. This jury was selected because these people had no awareness of any of these things. How can we possibly expect our judicial system to work, when the key cog in the machine is so dumbed down?

paulsur on December 10, 2007 at 9:41 PM

I’m sorry, but I’ll take Ms. Williams account of the whole thing. She didn’t seem stupid when she was talking about the case. As she said, she took a lot of notes during the whole trial.

paulsur on December 10, 2007 at 9:41 PM

You sound just as “elitist” as this juror William Neal, who was quoted above as saying, “They just picked the jury based on socio-economical reasons. A lot of these people are blue collar, you know, working UPS, working food, cafeteria cashier…”

There is no way I will believe that people who work UPS, working “food”, cafeteria cashier, etc., are stupid by nature. And paulsur, has there been any evidence presented at all by anyone that these people lacked basic literacy, or lacked an interest in current events?

The tragedy here is that you had one super-ego, a person in love with himself who believed he could not ever be wrong, who bullied the other jurors to AVOID the evidence and buy into his personal notion of how things SHOULD be, not what the law said.

A true 10 percenter.

Wouldn’t be really interesting what his opinions on 9/11 and the war on terrorism are – too easy to predict.

Probably celebrates Olby’s bravery, and Momma Sheehan’s courage in very reverent tones.

I know how the lady feels. I used the term “Islamist” in an email to Shep Smith this afternoon. He went nuts and actually sent me two back-to-back emails telling me I needed to do some reading. I got mad and sent him a lengthy email back, with an explanation of the term. I also asked if he’d ever bothered to listen to Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Brigitte Gabriel, Walid Shoebat, etc.

That was email. If I’d been confronted in person by someone as arrogant as Neal, I don’t know how well I would have held up.

Trial by a jury of 12 ball breakers, now there’s a concept.

“A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear.” —Marcus Tullius Cicero

When we tolerate hate as a replacement for love of this nation, we are too tolerant.

http://www.wfaa.com/sharedcontent/dws/wfaa/latestnews/stories/wfaa071022_mo_holylandjuror.1990eb588.html

At about 17:35 into the video, he starts to talk about how Hamas is a “political organization” and how Israel does the “same kind of thing”…it’s quite revealing.

If you watch the whole thing, he makes it pretty clear he wasn’t going to convict unless a check was payable to Hamas. Any proof of money laundering, or any amount of evidence, wasn’t going to be good enough for him. What a putz…he has no idea what “beyond a reasonable doubt” means…he was going by the “beyond all doubt, beyond any doubt whatsoever” which isn’t a standard because it doesn’t exist…unless of course you have someone writing Hamas on a check.

StuLongIsland on December 10, 2007 at 8:15 PM

Crying can be brought about by stress, and doesn’t necessarily mean someone is breaking down or losing it…just a way to release tension, a coping mechanism. I don’t know the woman personally, of course, so I don’t know if she was losing control or just releasing stress. But she didn’t seem all that weak to me…she stood up and said the polling was wrong, and she was also one of the jurors who saw to it that the jury was polled, to make sure the wrong verdict didn’t get recorded. When the going got tough, she stood her ground. I don’t see that as weakness.

‘Part of it does terrorist acts, but it’s a political movement. It’s an uprising.’”

Condoleezza Rice referred to it as a resistance movement not too long ago, and more recently compared them to the American civil rights movement. I’m not excusing this guy’s behavior; I’m criticizing officials in our own government who should know better. Considering Rice’s views on the matter why should anybody be shocked that an obnoxious juror might share them?

He didn’t. The HFL trial ended in a mistrial

I thought that’s what you were implying this juror managed to engineer by bullying.

And if other jurors agreed with her, but couldn’t manage to form a united front in spite of their numbers, then the gov’t. did a lousy job of jury selection.