Groklaw's PJ Says SCO's Demise Greatly Exaggerated 152
blackbearnh writes "Last week, the net was all abuzz with speculation that SCO was finally gone and done for. With the final judgment in SCO v. Novell in, and SCO millions of dollars in the hole to Novell, it seemed like the fat lady had finally sung. But like most things in the legal system, it isn't nearly that simple. O'Reilly Media sought out Groklaw's Pamela Jones, and got a rundown of what's still alive, and why a final end to the madness may be many years away. 'Summing up, it looks bleak for SCO at the moment, but let's enter the alternate realm of SCO's best-case scenario in its dreams: in that realm, SCO wins on appeal, which one of SCO's lawyers indicated might take a year and a half or five years, and the case is sent back to Utah for trial by jury, which is what SCO wanted (as opposed to trial by judge, which is what it got), then everything listed above (except for the IPO class action) comes alive again, presumably, depending on what the appellate court decides. Then SCO is in position once again to go after Linux end users, as well as IBM, et al.'"
Re:Please (Score:5, Informative)
What kind of question is that? (Score:2, Informative)
It will be a jury of people, of course. A "jury of your peers" means that it will be a jury of regular citizens taken from the area you live in. It does not mean some special test is performed to make sure they are in every way equal to you.
The jury of your peers thing was designed to prevent two things:
1) The government stacking the jury with it's own people. For example the government making a law saying "All jurors must be active law enforcement officers and must pass special selection of the prosecution." The jury must be selected from the population at large, they don't get to limit it to only people who are likely to be favorable to them.
2) The government picking jurors from a place that is biased against the defendant. For example suppose a black person is accused of a crime. Then suppose the government goes and flys in people from a location known to be highly racist to sit on the jury. Well, you can't do that. The jurors come from the venue where the rial is held.
That's what jury of your peers is all about. It means that the jury will be chosen from the body of citizens in the area where the trial happens. They don't get to stack the deck. There are then further interviews and challenges from both the prosecution lawyer and your lawyer. However neither side gets to limit the pool a prior.
It doesn't mean that you get to have a jury of people who are your exact age, race, IQ, political beliefs, and so on.
Re:OT but I don't care (Score:5, Informative)
It's broken on Konqueror and OS X/Safari and Firefox. We didn't want you to feel left out.
Re:What sort of Jury? (Score:3, Informative)
Wikipedia says otherwise:
the right to be tried by fellow peers in the Lord High Steward's Court and in the House of Lords, abolished 1948;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peerage [wikipedia.org]
Use at your own risk
Re:OT but I don't care (Score:3, Informative)
Bookmark: http://yro.slashdot.org/~jcsorocks/comments [slashdot.org]