According to this article, due to a print shop error, the notices weren’t mailed. Nobody caught this mistake until February 26th, when no potential jurors showed up. (At least 1,700 were expected.)
Judges appealed for volunteer jurors on TV and even sent deputies to the local mall to get them. It didn’t work, which I think is just as well. There would have been far fewer people, and anyone convicted (or lost a civil case) would have appealed, probably. (Wonder if their convictions would have been tossed?)
Law here (Cayman Islands) does allow for a judge to send officers out to the street to pull in potential jurors. The jurors are still vetted for basic requirements such as age and citizenship and then subject to voir dire.
I know it is a different set of laws but there has never been an issue with having verdicts tossed out due to finding jurors in this way.
Unlikely.
These prospective jurors would still have gone through the normal challenge procedure before being selected, and either lawyer could have objected to them. An appeal would have to show something more concrete than the random wy they were selected to overturn the verdict.
[Weren’t the original ancient Greek jurors chosen from people who happened to be hanging around the Agora (public marketplace) at the time of the trial? Seems about the same.]
Hmm, I was thinking a TV episode, but I see your point. The first idea that leaps to mind is that a trial’s about to start and one of the volunteer jurors is the one who actually committed the crime. Then another juror figures it out, and–oh, yeah, that has possibilities.
Or could be a rom com–a meet cute by a deputy and a volunteer juror at the mall sounds like it would work in a Hallmark movie.
Or a guy could be working up the nerve to talk to a woman and when she agrees to serve, he volunteers also, and they fall in love amidst the great drama of the jury trial.
Great drama? I know, I’ve been on a jury, but you did say TV movie, right?
There may be provisions of state law or Rules of the Court, or both, to the effect that you cannot be summoned/ordered to non-voluntary jury duty except in writing with X advance notice.
Plus, just how are they going to call up these prospective jurors? They may have a list of names and addresses, but how to translate that to phone numbers? You might be able to find me in the phone book (I can’t remember if I removed my listing) but all that gets you is my home landline number, which I’m not going to check until I get home from work. Plus how long would it take to look up each person’s phone number and call them? Sending the deputies out to corral people is probably going to have a much better chance of success.
Well… around some parts juror lists are culled from driver’s license databases, among other sources. And I know our driver’s license database also has whatever phone number was provided when the person last completed a transaction at our DMV. Sooo… not so hard to turn those lists into phone numbers.
Grabbing jurors randomly off the street is actually a thing, derived from old common law. It is called “praying a tales” (the grammar seems weird but there it is). If the court runs out of enough potential jurors to make 12, a judge could order the bailiff to drag in passers-by until the number was filled.
Googling the expression does not give many modern examples, as you might expect. The bureaucracy is usually better organised.
That knocks it right off the Hallmark Channel - unless that is a third juror is an amateur detective who owns a muffin shop or a candy shop or a donut shop, one of those cozy businesses.