2-5-89 I mentioned the other day that Oliver North is on trial in Washington, D.C. The judge, Gerhard Gesell, is having a hard time finding jurors who know nothing about the case, as well he should! During the summer of 1987, Congress held hearings on the Iran-Contra fiasco. North was the central witness. He was on television every day for at least a week. Newspapers, television, and magazines were filled with stories about him. Moreover, President [Ronald] Reagan was bombarded with questions about his role in and knowledge of the arms sale to Iran. How could anyone not know about North, especially someone who lives in Washington? The idea boggles the mind. But maybe that shows how out of touch I am with ordinary people. After all, I work on a college campus, rarely if ever watch popular fare on television, and don’t have kids to worry about or watch. My time is spent thinking about the world. To many people, the world of politics is alien. They know that powerful people make decisions affecting their lives, but don’t vote, don’t read about current issues, and don’t watch news programs. So I understand how it can happen. It’s just that it shouldn’t. People owe it to themselves and to others to stay abreast of political news, for ultimately we, the people, are the decisionmakers. If we are uninformed and uninterested, we run the risk of being led by the nose.
What about the rule, stated by Judge Gesell, that prospective jurors must be uninformed about the North case? Is it a good rule? I think not, because it confuses factual ignorance with impartiality. What we want are impartial jurors, jurors who haven’t made up their minds about North’s guilt or innocence, jurors who can make their decision based on what is presented in court. But somehow this gets twisted into a requirement that the jurors be ignorant, as if anyone who knows about the case must have made up his or her mind about North’s guilt or innocence—as if knowledge entails bias. Some people (my officemate, Ken Kemp, for example) claim that the North case is different, because he was granted use immunity in exchange for his Congressional testimony. This means that what he said cannot be used against him in the criminal trial. So (the reasoning goes) if jurors watched the proceedings and heard North’s testimony, they are tainted, and we do not want tainted jurors. But why not? The taint, if such it is, is factual, not judgmental. That is, why can’t jurors simply ignore what they heard and base their judgments on what is presented in court? It might be difficult, but certainly it’s not impossible. I could do it. Perhaps I’ll work on this issue in the next couple of years. It’s in my area of specialization—philosophy of law—and it raises interesting conceptual questions concerning the nature of bias, partiality, knowledge, and judgment.
