Of course I knew that juries reached verdicts and determined whether someone was innocent or guilty — but I had not understood that meant the jury found the facts. This view of the jury as a “fact finder” had certain ramifications: it meant that a “fact” was just about anything that group of twelve people could be persuaded to believe, by whatever means. Under these circumstances, quite a gap could develop between the “facts” and the truth, between what a jury could be persuaded to believe and what had actually happened.
David S. Lifton