Pine Nuts: Jury law and AI
Submitted by Jeff Munson on Mon, 06/10/2024 - 6:40am
There is nothing more pleasing to mine ear than the music of children at play, and yet that gladdening music is scarce today, as mortgages and rents push potential parents away from our mountain redoubt. Why not let AI take over the humdrum jobs, and free folks to create art, make music, author books, make babies, because at bottom that’s what we all want to do.
And why stop at eliminating humdrum jobs when AI could just as easily run legislatures, allowing our public servants to repair to the groggery to talk about their campaigns for reelection, and what a guttersnipe their opponent is, without the offensive intrusion of governing.
And while we’re at it, let’s replace the 12-person jury with AI to decide a case in minutes rather than days or weeks. As Mark Twain opined away back in 1862, “When the peremptory challenges were all exhausted, a jury of twelve men was impaneled — a jury who swore they had neither heard, read, talked about, nor expressed an opinion concerning a murder which the Indians in the sagebrush, the very cattle in the corrals, and the stones in the streets were cognizant of!”
Unless they have crawled out from under a rock, think how difficult it is today to find 12 jurors who have not already made up their minds on a case before peremptory challenges. And too, AI would not have to worry about being doxed following the verdict, as we live in an age when application of justice is oftentimes met with retaliation of injustice.
For someone who has lived much of the past 40 years in the 19th century, I am more than a little apprehensive of AI. I would rather ask a librarian than ask AI, and I will most likely go to my grave carrying this archaic preference.
Mark Twain had the ability to characterize social inadequacies such as our American justice system in one sentence.
"I have but one definite purpose in view: that is, to make enough money to insure me a fair trial, and then to go and kill Colonel Evans."
Or take this little Twain snipe from Nevada: “Our ranches here are very scattered, as scattered perhaps as lawyers in heaven.”
Much as I fear AI, I do admire the art, as illustrated above by Twain scholar Barb Schmidt.
Finally, as is our custom, we shall leave the last word to our mutual friend, Mark Twain.
“What we need now, is not laws against crime, but a law against insanity. That is where the true evil lies. We have an insanity plea that would have saved Cain ... Do you know why Cain has been branded as a murderer so heartily and unanimously in this country? Because he was neither a Republican nor a Democrat. No, the way it is now, the asylums can hold the sane people, but if we tried to shut-up the insane, we should run out of building materials.”
— For more than 35 years, in over 4,000 performances, columnist and Chautauquan McAvoy Layne has been dedicated to preserving the wit and wisdom of “The Wild Humorist of the Pacific Slope,” Mark Twain. As Layne puts it: “It’s like being a Monday through Friday preacher, whose sermon, though not reverently pious, is fervently American."
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