Calling out some unconscious bias in the SF Superior Court

I just concluded serving on a jury in SF Superior Court on a criminal charge.  The most important thing to share is that it was a valuable experience and I came away with a high opinion of the behavior and integrity of the judge, the assistant district attorney, the City's defense attorneys, and our jury.  I think we all did a good job.

However, during jury selection, I started to notice a pattern that concerned me.   Asian potential jurors were being asked questions that seemed to me to be missing the point of what they were trying to say.   Soon after I suspected it was a pattern about Asians, the last four potential jurors were dismissed; all of them Asian.   I decided to approach the judge, and was asked to speak to the courtroom on the record after all the jurors had left.

At that point I explained my observation and gave three examples.  I also made it clear that I do not believe this pattern would have any effect on the justice in this case.  I just felt that after hearing about the importance of surfacing unconscious bias for two days that the court itself was exhibiting some, and it’s my responsibility to say something once I saw something.  I am pleased to say that the judge expressed appreciation that I would make this statement and that he and the lawyers all took my observations to heart, although of course I don’t know how valid they found them.  They asked if it would bias me against any of them (answer:  no, they all did it) and if it would bias me in the case (also no).

After thinking about it afterwards, I realized that there is a common thread to the observations, and I’ve never really thought about this as an Asian perspective, but maybe it is. 

1.       1)  We like to follow the rules.  Most of ‘em weren’t made to be broken.

2.       2)  We don’t like to say we’re absolutely 100% sure about anything.

Several times people were asked if they were certain that they could not be affected by personal bias regarding the credibility of policemen, the gender of the defendant, the presumed guilt of an arrested person, the certainty of circumstantial evidence, or willingness to be swayed by the opinion of an admired fellow juror.   It is my inference that following the repetitive focus on being unbiased, they were uncomfortable with giving the impression of too much confidence.  So while many of us took your questioning to mean, “Do you think it’s realistic that any of your biases (and we all have some) would affect your interpretation of the evidence?” and were comfortable saying no, I suspect their interpretation was “Are you absolutely sure that this particular bias can never affect your opinion no matter what?” and said, “No.  How can I be absolutely sure?”   Following that admission of the tiniest doubt, they became fish in a pond.

I recognize that the lawyers have a right to issue peremptory dismissals for whatever reason they want, but I think both they and the judge fell into this trap.  I’m willing to surmise that if you review the list of all potential jurors that were dismissed by any party, you’ll find that a majority, if not strong majority of them were Asian.

As I said, I don’t think this affects the worthiness of the jury selected in this case.  I have no reason to believe that Asians have a different view about what is just.   But I feel it is my obligation to warn you about this bias in the event a future case would ever be affected. 

God ≅ Pi (Just a little after Pi Day)

 I was just talking with my daughter and her friend (both 11th grade) about pi and how surprising it is that the relationship between circles and lines didn't come out to a less irrational number.  I mean, everything else in math and computers seems to come down to 0, 1, or 2^x so 3.1415926535 8979323846 2643383279 und so weiter seems kind of like a test to see whether or not you'll buy it and therefore everything else the teacher's going to feed you the rest of the year.

Then I decided to offer this:   Pi makes no sense if you start from the point of wondering why there's pi.   If you start from the point that there has to be a number that mathematically relates lines to the size of a circle then you have reasoned correctly that there is one.  And just to reward you with a bit of consistency that math is so good at, that number is the same, whether you're looking for circumference, area, or volume.  It's just weird. 

And then I said that this explanation is a lot like the existence of God.  If you decide to start with someone's idea of God and test to see if it makes sense, it's pretty easy to punch holes in the definition.   But at the same time, at least there was a lot of thought that went into someone's answer to the biggest question(s) in the universe.  That's at least deserving of respect, if not belief.  

On the other hand, if you start from the point that there's power in the universe greater than what we already understand, you'd have to be either an idiot or imagination-constricted to claim that there is not.  The entire premise of the scientific method is that there are ways to approach defining new things that we didn't already know.   Of course, the limitation of the scientific method is that it fails if it cannot rely on consistency.

So therefore the question of God is not whether or not power greater than us exists, it's a question of how tightly we feel comfortable defining it, or at least part of it.  And like pi, it probably is not a simple number or formula.   It's more like an irrational number. 

Boom!   I've had one epiphany today.  I can just go get lit now... it's Saturday.

I checked back with the kids to see what they thought about that.   And I got another one of those reminders that some things in life are still as simple as 0, 1, or 2^x.   And it's that even a good and polite 11th grader knows that saying "Yes" and otherwise staying quiet is pretty good cover for thinking about something else entirely.

Full disclosure:  I stole this idea about defining God by deduction from a C.S. Lewis book my old girlfriend Nancy (the Baptist) asked me to read.  But I claim credit for the analogy to pi!