jury duty poll

so pissed that I just got served AGAIN

I got called in for jury duty for the first time last week and I was selected for a criminal case re: possession w/ the intent to distribute a controlled substance; it was a less-than-one day trial with like 3 fucking days of deliberation. It was a lot of fun!

Being on a jury is srsly one of the most fascinating things I have ever experienced in my life

was on a trial about 2 years ago, had to miss a week (unpaid) from work for some bullshit girlfriend-beating case. should never have gone to trial (dude was obviously guilty) and perp and victim were both from way out of town - so glad asshole came to my city to beat his girlfriend on New Year's Eve and then waste our taxpayer $$$ almost 2 years later trying to weasel out of it.

xp

our deliberations consisted of "does anybody believe this guy's story?" and everybody in the room saying "nope". Guilty, less than half an hour.

I go because I'm summoned, I stay because free donuts.

I mean as someone who just finds other ppl inherently fascinating the idea of truly randomly selecting 11 other ppl (I mean the only common factor is that you all decide to live in the same county) and forcing them to interact is rly cool!

Luckily my company pays for missed time due to jury duty but if it didn't I would have been rly unhappy.

It was fascinating how ppl interpreted the law bcz all 12 of us unanimously found the dude guilty but we were split abt whether there was actually enough evidence to convict him, despite the fact that his story was clearly full of holes. I think part of it is that it wasn't a violent crime w/ an actual directly relatable victim so it wasn't like "Oh this dude is a liar, fuck it" it was like "jeez I mean I don't want to put a guy in jail unless we are definitely positively sure he is guilty." Also a bit of playing detective bcz the thing we actually convicted him on was a p crucial thing where the defendent took the stand and wound up subtly incriminating himself and neither the defense attorney nor the prosecutor ever noticed or brought it up and it wasn't til deliberation that one of the jurors was all "yo hey wait a minute!"

And then you slowly learn abt what these other ppl are like as actual ppl outside of a jury over the next several days and at the end when they give you your checks they read out everyone's names for the first time and it feels totally cinematic

one time I went, I sat in the lobby for six hours and got told to go home.

got called and sat as an alternate - did not end up deliberating

I've been called many times at the county level, but only once at the city level. I've served only once - on a pathetically ill-considered drunk driving case the guy never should have contested. Even the public defender seemed to think the whole case was foolish. We sat all of, oh, 20 minutes on it.

that was pretty perfect for me. i got to observe a trial, participate in jury experience, but didn't end up having to pass judgement at the end (tho the dude def did it -- he assaulted some guy writing him a parking ticket) xp

man u sent a dude to prison on some possession bullshit? that's fucked up. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_nullification for real

Being on a jury is srsly one of the most fascinating things I have ever experienced in my life

― Stevie D(eux), Tuesday, October 8, 2013 10:59 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

OTM.

I had a child molester case; it was grim as fuck but totally, totally fascinating.

I served once: a civil case a few days before Christmas in '95. Because the defense fucked up, a day's trial turned into two days of deliberation. I was amused by the four veterans, who had taken informal notes and could tell the rest of us to the second when we'd be dismissed for lunch.

I got called to serve federal three years ago but was sent home after three hours.

man u sent a dude to prison on some possession bullshit? that's fucked up. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_nullification for real

― adam, Tuesday, October 8, 2013 6:23 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

dude he had an entire 8th of weed on him, we need to get that filth off our streets

Got a jury duty letter about a month ago, haven't heard back yet.

Been called many times, served twice. Case #1: a woman was run over by a dump truck and her surviving family was suing the truckers insurance company. Case #2: Don't throw away your weed when the approaching officer has a clear visual of you doing it. Completely fascinating to see the process in action.

bcz all 12 of us unanimously found the dude guilty but we were split abt whether there was actually enough evidence to convict him

;_;

Served once when I lived in NJ, over 20 years ago, on an accident liability case.

been called about four or five times, never served.

loved doing it, would love to do it again. was so fascinated by the entire process that I took a day off work to attend the sentencing the following year and find out what ended up happening.

we'd actually been divided in the room on deliberation and had gone back in to consult the judge. so then two of us who were on 'guilty' had to argue around the five who weren't, except one dude who walked back in and said 'ok guilty, I just want to get out of here.'

when the judge gave the guy a bunch of years I felt vindicated and relieved.

Never been called, I find this annoying, but probably not as annoying as serving on jury duty would be.

I did it late last year, 1st case was 4 days, young lad driving dealers about, Guilty.
2nd case, 50+ million pounds worth of weed on pallets hidden with imported meat, never seen so much and never held a pillow sized bag of it before, the stuff was actually stamped with "Kandahar, Afghanistan".
We got a month in and the case was halted due to one of the (6) guys involved, wife took pictures with her phone of a couple of the jury outside the court on a cig break. Myself and a couple of others went for a pint one day and a couple of people from the gallery were in the bar staring, it wasn't nice. I was a little gutted it ended, as it was really interesting, but not so gutted as I was getting a little paranoid.

I have been called twice. The first time the case reached a settlement by noon and no one even got called.

Second time I was called I got picked! It was a two week civil trial to determine whether it was okay to release a sexually violent predator who had not completed his treatment at the mental hospital. His plan was to move out of state to live with his elderly parents in a small town in Idaho.

It only took us half an hour to deliberate, but there were days and days of expert testimony. A good percentage of the experts in both sides of the case were such shifty, fly-by-night, bullshitters. The lawyers weren't dazzling either. One piece of evidence that was introduced was a piece of writing that the guy did in the mental hospital. In it, he offhandedly mentioned Gore he thought of his victims as "little shits". The prosecuting attorney practically shrieked at him, "you thought of these children as little pieces of excrement?" I mean, I hate perverts too lady, but thats just an idiomatic expression.

Don't know what the word Gore is doing in that post. It's either autocorrect or my phone is going to kill me.

I've spent too long sitting in on boring Crown Court cases to find the idea of being called up remotely appealing, but it's cool and encouraging to see how many people itt are saying that they really enjoyed it and found it interesting.

I'm always slightly disconcerted by how bored and not with it the jurors appear to be, particularly worrying in trials where it seems like the defendant is probably innocent. Obviously ILX isn't representative of the whole but it's still nice to see that there are people who take it seriously, it always puts a downer on my day to see a jury that clearly doesn't know wtf is going on

but it's still nice to see that there are people who take it seriously

On the second trial, a couple of women said they didn't have a clue what was going on and were getting bored. We did have two trial bundles to be fair, but it wasn't that complicated.

I can't stand people who try to get out of jury duty, or make it a point of pride that they got out of jury duty.

convicted in the court of public opinion and sentenced to ignominy by the lord justice how's life

this story is one of the most dispiriting accounts of the jury system i can remember

SEC sues Goldman Sachs for securities fraud (and other financial schadenfreude)

I can't stand people who try to get out of jury duty, or make it a point of pride that they got out of jury duty.

oh believe me: I tried to extricate myself from federal jury duty three years ago because after requesting a delay until the end of the new semester I instead got the first week. I was terrified of my students missing perhaps a week's worth of class. Luckily I was excused after lunch.

I've talked about it before but I served twice a week for three months on a county grand jury. We dealt with everything from piddly drug cases to multiple homicides to rapes to child abuse.

xp: sorry Alfred, to clarify: I meant people who try to make up excuses to get out of jury duty, not people with legitimate conflicts. During my jury selection, there was a guy who made a fuss about something, and was obviously faking/exaggerating. He didn't have to serve though. I met an attorney once who told me that the only people who don't get out of jury duty are the ones who aren't smart enough to. Somebody else I know told me that if she was called up for a black person's trial, she would drop n-bombs and state that she was prejudiced against black people. :(

americans in no civic identity shocker

If quizzed on my personal beliefs in the screening, I drop "Amnesty International" and invariably get off.

The social compact is clearly dead, don't look at me to play the sucker.

you should just RT some Dennis Perrin at them.

Been called four times, served twice. First case was a woman who fell on the sidewalk and sued the city. Went on for three days, a fellow juror taught me poker, and I ended up winning $40 from him which I promptly blew at Jazz Record Mart during our lunch break. Case ended in a settlement, and we weren't told what that was. Afterwards, the judge asked if we wanted to hang out and ask him questions. Someone asked him what his most difficult case was in terms of maintaining impartiality. He said it was a plastic surgery malpractice case; when the woman who had been permanently disfigured and brain damaged from a botched nose job took the stand, the judge said he lost it and just started weeping.

damn

i've never been called! it's crazy. i think i'd love it. i'd probably mouth off during selection and get nixed tho

I've never been called, I'd probably quite like to be if my company would still pay me (I think they would).

tbh I don't have a problem with people trying to get out of it, I bloody would if I wasn't getting paid, how are people supposed to pay bills/rent/eat if the case goes on for weeks??

I was called for selection for a DUI case and I really, really wanted to be on the jury just for the experience. The defense attorney didn't want me on the jury at all, though; I believe there was some question about the credibility of the officer that was the crux of the defense's case and she kept grilling me about my admission that I had extended relatives in law enforcement (1 retired police officer, 1 former bail bondsperson) and whether that made me automatically believe people in law enforcement over others. I eventually got booted when she got around to asking about my past history with DUI situations and I disclosed that I knew 6 kids who died in DUI accidents while growing up and countless others who had been injured.

I honestly just wanted to go through the trial, though.

dan, there are easier ways to go through a trial than getting selected for jury duty

Been called 5 or 6 times, never picked. Got a letter a few months ago saying I was in the pool for prospective federal grand jurors for the next several months (18 months? can't remember), but haven't been called.

xp: I considered driving through Florida but that would just get me killed

driving through Florida will get you killed just from the folks in the center lane who think the green arrow in the left turn lane is for them and plow on ahead, oblivious to why everybody's honking at him

hey guess who just got summoned!

motherfucker

I didn't get to guess :(

no you dont understand motherfucker is the name of my juror

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBuNvyo4j54

#1 way not to get picked, never forget

http://yetanotherbitterinfertile.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/st-jury-duty.jpg

but... she did get picked

"I can't stand people who try to get out of jury duty, or make it a point of pride that they got out of jury duty."

It's this kind of attitude that makes me proud to have a criminal record.

witness intimidation?

juror intimidation

every time I see this thread I can't stop thinking of the "jury duty" joke from Children's Hospital

Levels of jury tampering were reported in 2003 to be "worryingly high" in Merseyside by the then Chief Constable Norman Bettison and the then Home Secretary David Blunkett.[3]

never change la

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Have been called for both criminal and civil juries about 6 times but have never served. The latter were sometimes settled out of court at the last minute.

Have long feared being on a criminal jury where the suspect appeared guilty but there just wasn't enough evidence to convict.

why is that something to be afraid of? i mean that's what's supposed to happen

fear of either letting off someone who is guilty, or (worse) jailing someone who is innocent. That isn't scary?

I have been on a jury where although we all thought the accused shot a fellow drug dealer there wasn't even enough evidence to indict let alone convict

*indicts ham sandwich*

no i think letting someone off who is guilty would be exhilarating

plus 11 people would agree with you, it would feel great

why is that something to be afraid of? i mean that's what's supposed to happen

― single white hairball (harbl)

I know it's not what you intended, but I seriously would not want to devote weeks away from work, despite its attractions in the abstract, to serve on a grand jury.

oh yeah i'd be pissed if that happened to me. i almost got on a jury for a first degree murder and i started to panic because i couldn't be away from work for that long. then i got stricken from the box. but that's different than what he's talking about.

so what's "exhilarating" about letting off someone who committed first-degree murder?

freaking out the squares

I've only been called once, and ended up on a jury. I didn't expect to because I've known so many people who got called and never served. The case was only sort of interesting, but it was still an interesting experience. The defendant was a sketchy dude with a pretty bad lawyer (or at least she didn't impress me on this case -- though she was working with a weak hand). He was charged with bribery, because he had offered some cops a few thousand dollars to let him go after they found him with some weed in his pocket during a traffic stop. The possession charge would have been minor, but the guy was on parole from a prior offense and even a little weed could have landed him back in jail. He was desperate not to go back to jail, because his prior conviction was a sex offense, and I'm guessing his first go-round in the pen was not a pleasant one. Once he offered the bribe, the cops went along with it long enough for him to go to an ATM and actually hand them the cash. Then they slapped cuffs on him.

There were a few people on the jury who thought this seemed like entrapment, but the guy had chosen not to use an entrapment defense -- I think because there are specific things you have to prove that his lawyer knew he couldn't do. So instead the defense was just kind of, "Hey, he's an OK guy, this was just a little weed, he was totally freaked out and intimidated by the cops and he gave them money because he was afraid they were going to beat him up." His case was not at all helped by the other circumstances: He was in his mid-30s, and when he got pulled over (for speeding through the East Village) he has 3 or 4 girls in the car, two of them underage and none over 20. They were all going "to party." The prosecution managed to get his prior conviction in there through the cops' testimony, because it established his motive: He kept telling them "I can't go back to jail." But the defense slipped up and let in what he'd actually been convicted of, because one of the defense witnesses said something like, "Well, we knew he'd been in trouble for the underage sex thing."

Anyway, we started out at about 8-4 guilty, quickly moved to 10-2, and then spent about an hour hashing it out with those 2two They just basically thought the cops were jerks and the guy was a harmless schmuck. Several of us sort of agreed, but under the legal definitions of the charges, there was no way to say he wasn't guilty. He didn't even dispute that he had offered the cops money and handed it to them. So we settled on guilty. The defense lawyer made the judge poll the jury on whether we agreed with the verdict, so we all had to stand up individually and say "Yes" with him sitting 20 feet away from us. A little uncomfortable, but it's probably good to be uncomfortable about sending a guy to prison.

One of the best things about the whole experience was that it was down in those lower Manhattan courts, so for three days I got to walk out the door and have lunch in Chinatown. Ate a lot of good food.

how long did trial and deliberation take?

It was a day for jury selection, a day and a few hours for the trial, and then we deliberated maybe two and a half hours. Basically three days total. During deliberations we sent out some questions to the judge, and he was a little alarmed by them because it sounded like we were thinking about entrapment. He called us all back to the courtroom and reminded us that the defendant hadn't presented an entrapment case, so that wasn't something for us to consider.

I made the observation during deliberations that what the guy was mostly guilty of was being really stupid. He could have bargained down the possession charge to something that might not have meant much time, even with the parole violation. Instead he was going in on a felony bribery charge.

People who have committed sex crimes in the past sometimes face stiffer penalties than what appear to be the maximum consequences of a new conviction

Called once, but wasn't even pulled out of the waiting room. I'd love to serve but probably never will bc lawyers are usually stricken.

my dream is to be NULLIFIER

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Hey guys guess where I am right now

miscarrying some justice?

killing time in a waiting room?

committing murder?

at a record store thumbing through beat-up Beach Boys vinyl?

buying a copy of Long Road Back to Eden?

So... I killed a guy

In Reno? bcz it's been done.