Also, it could (in fact, probably would) exclude some jury members. The jury is supposed to deliberate together, not as a bunch of subcommittees.
[quote=“RealityChuck, post:1, topic:716557”]
[ul][li]Jury chairs are comfortable, but not after you’ve been sitting on them for five hours.[/ul][/li][/QUOTE]
Can you take more frequent bathroom breaks if you need to? Many older males, for example, find that they need to pee fairly frequently.
And pregnant women, too!
I served for two weeks on a drug case, and you’d better believe I told the court that if I needed to go, I wasn’t going to be stopped! 
When I got called for jury duty a couple years ago, when they asked about knowing anyone in the DA’s office or the defense team, one woman raised her hand and said she knew the DA, but she refused to say how she knew him. After much hemming and hawing, the DA finally stood up and that she was a nurse in his doctor’s office. She couldn’t say how she knew him because of HIPAA! Anyway she wound up getting picked for the jury so I guess it wasn’t a problem.
It didn’t come up, but you have to stay in the courtroom until there’s a recess or they ask the jury to leave because they need to discuss something out of their hearing.
I would imagine accommodations could be made. First of all, at the beginning jurors were asked if there was a reason they couldn’t be on the jury. Those who had them were questioned by the judge and the attorneys in private. You could bring up issues like that and be dismissed – no one wants a juror not listening to the evidence because he or she can only think, “when can I pee?”
The judge also allowed us to stand and stretch during lulls (when calling witnesses, who might be in a different part of the courthouse*). If you had to leave, I suppose you could go back to the jury room (which had rest rooms) for a minute, though the judge and attorneys would have to agree to it.
They do allow the jury some leeway. If you have a cough, they will pause things, and you’re welcome to bring cough drops during deliberation (My sinuses were acting up, so I kept sucking on them). All the jurors brought water (and Pepsi) bottles with them into the jury booth (and drank from them during the trial. It was hot in the courtroom, and everyone else had water available, so there was no reason to deny it.
*Witnesses cannot watch any part of the trial. Some who came up were clearly confused about what was going on and why they were there.
BTW, here’s an articleon the trial.
Yes, all Judges would find a way to accommodate you. Normally court has a morning session and an afternoon session, with a 15 minute break in the middle of each. However, many trials have many more breaks, much to the annoyance of the judge. Also, some courts do things differently. In Vegas they don’t start the trials until the morning hearing calendar is finished, so trial days could start anywhere between 10 and 11:30 a.m. In Anchorage they just put all the hearings in the afternoons, and trials run from 8:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. with no long breaks.
RE: Potential juror knowing someone in DA’s office.
As it turns out in voir dire we were only asked if we knew any of the lawyers present and any of the plaintiffs or defendants, including in this case the corporation being sued. They searched for any reason anyone would be unable to remain impartial, going so far as to even ask if we had a problem with lawyers in general or that one was from N.Y. One woman did get caught in a lie during questioning. That was pretty interesting, these attorneys really knew how to weed out potential conflicts.
I ended up being selected. I was a little surprised because I thought one of my answers about a previous situation similar to the case would cause the plaintiffs to choose me but the defense to strike. I wonder just how many strikes each side is allowed.
[QUOTE=RealityChuck]
No notes. The question was brought up during jury selection; it can sometimes happen in long trials (several weeks at least), but that’s rare. I think the idea is that the notes can influence how you think, and could be shown to other jurors; if there’s a question about what is said, you request a reading of the transcript.
[/QUOTE]
Perhaps it’s because ours was a civil trial (contracts) but the court did provide notepads for each juror, if we chose to use them. They were handed to the bailiff each time we left the box and returned to us as we returned. We wrote our names on the outside so he would not have to open them and turned over to the judge at the end of each day.
We of course could use them during our deliberations but we were to give no merit or weight to the fact another juror may have taken notes, or more of them. I leaned on mine pretty heavy when we first started, to associate comments with a particular contract, amendment, document or testimony, but that eventually progressed to pure discussion. After the trial they would be destroyed without anyone else ever having read them.
(I imagine some great doodles are lost this way.)
As I’ve gotten older I find it hard to sit and listen to someone for a long time in a classroom situation without nodding off. I would be nervous that I would start to nod off during a trial. Thankfully I probably will never be picked to find out.