My voice is not often heard on the list because I really prefer the
lurking role, but something caught my attention the other night
(pre-verdict) that I would like consider from a Vygotskian perspective. I was
listening to a group of legal analysts on CNN who were discussing the
relatively short time the jury took in diliberating the OJ case. Several
of the analysts were quite sure that the jury had begun deliberations
among themselves before they were supposed to. One analyst even suggested
that if the verdict turned out to be guilty that one of OJ's lawyers (I
don't remember which one) would probably file some sort of petition with
the court, try to prove that the jury talked ahead of time, and get the
case thrown out on those grounds.
Now, here's my humble opinion. It seems to me that what we have hear is
case that involves a group of people (12 jurors) who were forced into a
community. They essentially moved in a herd for 9 months. Granted, they
could not talk about the case during that time, but they could talk. In
looking at this situtation from a Vygotskian perspective, I am not at all
surprised that when the time came, the jurors were able to communicate
swiftly and effectively and reach a consensus.
At the risk of running this case even further into the ground, I would be
interested in other people's views.
Teresa Meehan
Doctoral Candidate
Educational Linguistics
University of New Mexico
meehan1 who-is-at unm.edu