A Bay County jury practically laughed the prosecutor out of court last week for wanting to convict a woman as an accessory after the fact to manslaughter, largely because she wiped from her children's reach blood on the kitchen stove. The verdict was another rebuke for State Attorney Jim Appleman's office, which does not perform well with trial juries and tries to avoid them even with stronger cases, especially if defendants can afford a private attorney.
Prosecutors elsewhere feel the same, probably.
Jury prosecution is becoming a lost art as fewer and fewer defendants exercise their right to trial by jury in an era when a hallmark of the modern state is the extent to which it has subjugated the jury system. Most articles in the Bill of Rights, in fact, reflected bad feelings left over from Colonial justice. The Founding Fathers included defense attorneys, but none had been king's prosecutors. Colonial prosecutors condemned the jury as incompetent, irresponsible and biased. Post-Colonial prosecutors have made the same accusation ever since.