Who Wants to Be a Drunken Juror?
Current Tennessee law prohibits drunk people from becoming jurors. Specifically, anyone who was recently or is currently intoxicated or is a habitual drunkard receives an automatic exemption from serving on a jury. Sounds reasonable, right? But some state lawmakers are moving to lift these restrictions, according to the Tennessean.com.
Apparently, jury pools are growing smaller and smaller-to the point that legislators think that letting drunk people hear trials and decide whether or not their peers are guilty of crimes is a sensible idea.
Reports indicate that Tennessee judges have experienced various forms of drunkenness in the courtroom, from jurors checking off the "habitual drunkard" box to inebriated jurors disrupting trials and getting replaced by alternates.
While these tactics could be ruses to get out of jury duty, they can also have a significant impact on a trial, which is probably why drunk people are forbidden to serve on juries in the first place.
So why would anyone want to potentially open courtroom proceedings to more drunken ruckuses than already occur? Sources suggest that the biggest motivation for lawmakers is a simple need for numbers. Trials need juries to fill the boxes.
But does this decision deserve a deeper look?
Short-term effects of ingesting alcohol include a decreased attention span, impaired judgment, difficulty understanding or remembering recent events, blurred vision and weakened sensory perception (including hearing), and uncertainty of location or actions. Let's take a closer look at those.
- Decreased attention span: Trials can be long. A drunken juror might miss important details and be unable to make a fully informed decision.
- Impaired judgment: Don't juries basically judge whether or not people are guilty of crimes? So…decreased judgment ability probably wouldn't be in the defendant's best interest.
- Difficulty understanding or remembering recent events: You can't make a just decision if you don't remember what the lawyers were talking about.
- Weakened sensory perception: There's this little thing called "evidence" that most jurors like to look at. Or listen to. Either way, the odds of adequately processing sensory information are against intoxicated people.
- Uncertainty of location or actions: Most people take jury duty seriously and behave appropriately, knowing that their decisions can have serious impacts on other people's lives. This is probably because most people don't serve on juries while under the influence.
The point is, some laws make sense as they stand.
Reports note that Tennessee legislators are also considering other ways of increasing the number of jurors eligible to serve. As law stands now, people with certain professions (including doctors and lawyers) are excused from jury duty automatically, as are disabled people and the elderly.
Maybe they should start there and let those with impaired decision-making capability in the jury pool if the prospects are still meager in a year or two. Just a suggestion.