Word: adler
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...book, Adler treats jury consultants as a regrettable development, in part because they give further advantage to wealthy clients who already hire the best lawyers. To undercut their influence, he urges the complete elimination of peremptory challenges. The Supreme Court has already disallowed them when used solely for reasons of race or gender. It may eventually abolish them altogether. If not, says Adler, Congress and state legislatures should...
Just in time to put the Simpson trial in perspective, a full, gloomy diagnosis of the larger problem has arrived in a new book, The Jury by Stephen J. Adler, legal editor of the Wall Street Journal (Times Books; $25). Adler describes the several juries he examined from selection through trial proceedings to the deliberations that bumptiously rendered a verdict: "There were lots of sincere, serious people who -- for a variety of reasons -- were missing key points, focusing on irrelevant issues, succumbing to barely recognized prejudices, failing to see through the cheapest appeals to sympathy or hate, and generally botching...
...that from a man who supports the institution of juries, which are, after all, a group of ordinary citizens who sacrifice their time, comfort and sometimes income. It's not the jurors who are the problem, says Adler, but the ordeal they are subjected to. First, the most competent citizens are permitted to escape the jury pool. The pool is whittled down further by peremptory challenges, which allow lawyers to strike a potential juror from the panel without giving reasons. The lawyers have reasons, of course, often based on stereotypes of race, gender, age or income that lead them...
...particular, Adler said he wanted the jury tohear the testimony of Janis Lawrence, a formerOstrowski advisee. Lawrence testified thatOstrowski made an unwanted advance toward her inWashington in late 1990 after she had finished herthesis...
...Adler also said he believes Harvard had a dutyto investigate...