Surely, the system prior to the sixties was vexed with horrible racism, sexism, homophobia, and other prejudices that were later challenged. And the era of my childhood was marked by the tremendous reforms of the Warren court along with a very brief period of extremely liberal ideas. As such, having been exposed to this in my formative years, the Draconian changes that swept the society in the eighties seemed extreme and bizarre to me, perhaps more so than was warranted.

But for some reason I still believe the actual knowledge of the jury pool prior to the conservative revolution was more complete and more valid. I think people then truly understood what they were supposed to be doing, even if they let their biases interfere.

Two important things happened in the late seventies and eighties that made today's juror's not only more biased and unwilling to hear the case of the defendant, but also actually impeded their understanding of the theory and purpose of the system -- that they were supposed to be listening to the defendant's case and that they were free to consider its validity, and ultimately perhaps even concur with the defense.

Because the authoritarian message of the conservative revolution was coupled with decreased quality of civics education (some would argue intentionally), large blocks of the public now actually have incorrect beliefs about the facts of the criminal justice system. They either have forgotten, or more likely, were simply never taught, that the criminal trial is a fact-finding process and that the defendant is presumed innocent.

It took a while for me to understand that most people today do not take this right-wing attitude as a matter of opinion -- as a matter of their beliefs which they are willing to allow to influence them in the jury box. They aren't consciously nullifying their charge, choosing to ignore the defendant's rights because they want to. They actually believe the burden of proof is on the defendant, and they believe it is technically wrong and illegal to disagree with an authority such as the police or a state prosecutor. In some cases, they may actually not realize they have the option to find the defendant not guilty. I think this is true even if they are instructed otherwise. I am an educator. Something odd has happened in this country over the last few decades, and it isn't immediately obvious to everyone. It appears in the course of my work, because my work involves teaching, thinking, and evaluation of arguments and data. It also involves communicating complex ideas to younger people, and then assessing their understanding of what has been communicated. Believe me, we are in trouble!

In my experience people no longer process instructions, especially complex instructions or instructions that employ formal language. They no longer use formal language, and they consider it a dead form of communication. They think in cliches and incomplete ideas, which impedes their ability to understand things as complex as a criminal trial. They find formal communication incomprehensible, and endlessly seek for formal ideas to be restated in "real world" terms. The only problem is that the "real world" they live in is a terribly limited place, which only allows for certain behaviors (like purchasing) and de-emphasizes reflective thought to the point that ideas involving more than minimal complexity are discarded as useless abstractions. Stories can't be very long, and pictures can't be very big. Authority is always the universal constant -- like the speed of light -- which is invoked handily to cut through troubling complexity and return to familiar and comfortable ground.

I think many people today really do not understand the basic principles which criminal trials are based on, and they no longer have the capability to interpret instructions which conflict with their underlying beliefs. They do not have the command of language necessary to articulate what they believe to begin with. Since they can't articulate what they believe, they can't recognize immediately in an effective way when formal instructions conflict with their prior knowledge. The result is the instructions are ignored, or they are "heard" in a warped way to agree with the underlying un-articulated prior (incorrect) knowledge.

In one criminal case which I am intimately aware of, the guilty verdict was achieved by a right-wing foreman who intimidated younger, less knowledgeable jurors with threats that they would be charged with contempt if they did not concede to a guilty verdict. It worked. These jurors actually believed they had to find the defendant guilty or they would face criminal charges, and this bizarre threat did not strike them as fundamentally questionable -- as it should any competent juror. That surprised me, and it was my first hint that many juror's today don't have the basic facts right about what they are doing and what they are supposed to be doing, nor what their options are.

The conservative revolution had a much bigger impact on our society than most older people realize. Among young people, it was very intense and very targeted. It changed the way kids process information and the way they view argument. It was a complex and multi-pronged effort that involved well coordinated attacks and sabotage at many levels and on many fronts. In this case, the sabotage of civics education coupled with extremist attitudes about criminal justice produced a large population of people who can't deliver justice in a criminal trial not only because they don't want to, but  because they have never been taught what an American trial is and how it is supposed to work. Their private religious culture has misled them with a very narrow authoritarianism, and their educational system has failed to correct the falsehoods which the private culture held to be true because they wished it so -- not because it was.