And that went to a trial?!?
Not only that, but one of the jurors, a kind of hippie-ish young woman, didn’t want to find him guilty because she felt bad for him. She thought that to be sure, there should be fingerprints from the scene that matched his (despite the fact that he worked there). She thought it was fishy that the police hadn’t dusted for fingerprints or gotten DNA evidence. It took 2 days of discussion before she finally conceded that her doubts fell outside the range of reasonable.
Might depend on the dollar amount, or there were other circumstances.
I made it to the panel one time; several other times I reported on the first day but was dismissed before the day was over. Did I enjoy it?
I certainly enjoyed the time I participated in a trial. It’s not the most exciting thing in the world, and it can drag at times. Still, it was interesting being directly involved in the outcome of a criminal trial.
The other times? It wasn’t as interesting, obviously, but when I did it in downtown L.A. it was nice to have an ample lunch break when there were some great restaurants nearby. Since I came to Eugene I’ve been summoned once, and that time I was done before noon. The jury manager explained that the parties had come to an agreement and let us go.
Generally, my workplace has provided for full salary while on jury duty, nor was my income otherwise affected, so low jury pay wasn’t an issue.
I come from a civil law jurisdiction that doesn’t have juries but am qualified as a lawyer in a common law jurisdiction that does, so I find this thread interesting just to see how this concept of jury duty works works out in everyday life, as opposed to reading the textbook account. As to the question, my impression is that public sector employees don’t mind jury duty - when they’re called, their employer accommodates them generously by giving them time off on full pay, so they might see it as a welcome diversion from everyday routine. Private sector employers might be less generous. If you’re self employed and get called for jury duty, that must seriously suck because of the shortfall in earnings.
They typically let you off if you’re self employed or for any other reason that it would be a hardship
Good! The next time I’m called, I’m going to enlist you as my surrogate. LOL
I worked for a municipal government. You got paid in full if you were on a jury. It never happened to me and I haven’t received notice in decades.
I’ve been in court many times. I currently work as a court officer on a semi-regular basis. Which is funny because I hate being in court. It’s so boring.
The criminal trial that I was on finished on Thursday last week. I was very impressed with the quality of the jurors, in that everyone seemed to really want to be completely fair to both sides – there was a lot of agreement right from the start, but some people did argue some points in good faith, and a couple of times I played devil’s advocate to help me clarify my own mind. It left a very good impression on me of the quality of “average” citizens.
The other point I want to agree with is the tremendous relief it was to be able to talk about the trial in detail with people who had seen and heard everything that I did.
Wow, I posted practically the same answer to this thread twelve years ago! Didn’t notice it was a zombie.