I just finished recently with jury duty in a criminal case. It was a unique and stressful experience, taking 6 days from start to finish. We were given very little in the way of physical evidence, and everyone, from the witnesses, the victims, and even the defendants alibi witnesses, had previous criminal records. We did find the defendant guilty on most of the charges (burglary, menacing, theft, conspiracy).
The whole jury felt that there was much we were not being told… and after the case was over we were told the defendant was up on many other charges involving theft, armed robbery, burglary, drugs, violence… and on top of that he was imtimidating other people (mostly teenagers) into either doing his dirty work or being involved in his crimes. Even this guys wife was involved, and he wasn’t above robbing family members of the people in his little “ring”… I took me a couple of days to get my jaw off the floor…
I know I felt alot of stress and worry (The defendants life is in our hands…Are we doing the right thing?)… and when the verdict was read by the judge the whole sense of “this is it…no turning back now” was pretty profound… and then when the judge and attorneys told us this guys history it was like a huge weight was lifted…
So, tell me about your jury experience… how were you affected?
Several times, all minor criminal trials. And my experience was much like yours, FWIW.
The most upsetting was the last. I’m very slow to mock juries for weird decisions because that jury box is a very claustrophobic, limited world. It’s like being an audience for a very complex, formal play where you’re only permitted to know–or actually consider–part of the proceedings.
It was a burglary case, where the actual facts of entry were perfectly clear. It got very fuzzy about actual intent, though–a critical factor for conviction.
Short version: his buddy got inside, apparently with a key (never explained), and asked the defendant to help him carry something outside as a favor. The arresting cop testified–rather emphatically–that the defendant made no attempt to flee when confronted and was cooperative. He claimed his friend just asked him to give a hand moving something heavy, so he agreed.
No forced entry at all, mind.
We suspected that probably the defendant didn’t know for sure his friend didn’t have a right to be there–and didn’t ask. The thing is, all of us had done very similar in the past. You see someone struggling with a heavy burden, even a stranger, so you offer to help. None of us had ever asked, “Is that yours? Can I see a receipt?”
So…no intent proved. Suspected? Oh yeah. Proved? No way.
The judge and prosecutor let us know they thought we were idiots just by their body language. (Glare, roll eyes.)
What the hell did they expect us to do? They laid down the rules of the formal dance, but didn’t give us a single damned thing that supported the critical element of intent.
It was both very frustrating and satisfying. And wholly exhausting.
Thanks for your reply, TVeblen… As far as my case, the only thing worse than what the prosecution gave us was what the defense gave us… they kept trying to make the victim out to be a criminal, because he had previous drug charges. The defendant then took the stand and included a person as part of his alibi who had just the previous day testified against him and was part of the crime in question. :smack: Smart.
The only physical evidence they gave us in my case was an ugly ass ring and a pawn ticket. They didn’t even bother to get a receipt or an appraisal for the ring, so we could convict the guy on a greater charge.
Y’know I find it real callous that in your case the attorneys acted like you were a bunch of jerks… when obviously they did a poor job of proving their case. :dubious:
It was in the civil, rather than the criminal jurisdiction. We spent most of the time listening to expert witnesses contradicting each other. There were four of us on the jury. After six days’ worth of evidence we had all decided that that the plaintiff was lying through his teeth and there was no way we were going to reach a verdict in his favour. The plaintiff’s barrister obviously sensed this and the parties settled out of court, so we never got to return a verdict. Actually, my strongest memory of the experience was how incredibly cold it was inside the courtroom. It was mid-July and the building was one of those old sandstone and marble edifices without any heating.
You do know that the simple fact that a guy is a scumbag doen’t mean he did what he’s accused of, right? That’s why they can’t tell you about his previous scumbaggery.
I’ve been called to jury duty twice, got on a case once. Civil trial, medical malpractice.
I have to say that I enjoyed the whole experience. Irony is that I have never been called back.
I was a juror several years ago on a federal case.
The defendent was sending obscene pictures he had taken of his girlfriend through the mail in an attempt to blackmail her.
It was a very involved case. The woman was the head of all the nurses at a major teaching hospital, and she had started this affair with an older man while she was still married. They ended up splitting up and she married another guy. The defendent was on a heart transplant list, and the defense attorney tried to make it out that this woman “held his life in her hands” which was a bunch of nonsense, as it turned out.
It took about a week, and we had to look at the graphic pictures he had sent her husband. It must have been very embarrassing for her.
What confused me is that the defense tried to make much of this “other guy” who had it in for the woman, and that he was the one who was sending the photos that he had stolen from the defendent’s car. But the prosecution had pretty solid evidence that they were the defendent’s photos, and that he was the one sending them, so we convicted him.
I think what I resented most was the time it cut into my life. But it was rather interesting. I did get the sense we were not getting the whole story.
I just ended my jury duty time yesterday. Nine days of fun, only not really fun. I’m still too exhausted to explain much but it was emotionally exhausting and heartbreaking. I was the last juror holding out for guilty and I was crying in the courtroom as the not guilty verdict was read. The US Attorney just didn’t present us with the proof we needed. I’m still angry about that as I know these people are guilty. I will do my dead level best never to do jury duty again.
Some of the effects on me during the trial were: inability to sleep, stomachaches,crying. Really any of the stress-induced symptoms are likely. I seriously wanted to smoke a cigarette (or a pack), and I did get drunk last night.
I was picked as a juror in two DUI cases some years ago. In SC at the time, a BAL of .10 was not per se evidence of DUI. I believe that has since been changed. (In fact, one of the judges said that he had seen defendants being acquitted of DUI with a BAL of .23! Yikes!)
In the first case, those of us in the jury pool suspected that this defendant might have been drunk given the circumstances. He had, however, refused a Breathalyzer (the original such device was named the Drunkometer :eek: ) test, so there was no record of the BAL. In any case, despite our suspicions about his guilt, the consensus among us was that we felt that the prosecution did not present a compelling case for guilt. Verdict: Not guilty.
The second case, was a little different. This chap did take a Breathalyzer test, blowing a .10. Our consensus there was that this chap was not impaired, based on the testimony of the arresting officer. Verdict: Not guilty.
Also, having heard a number of people talk about their jury duty experiences, it is apparently not uncommon for the jurors to believe that the defendant is guilty, but vote “not guilty” because the prosecution did not make a convincing case.
The case was the State of Georgia versus a man charged with selling coke to an undercover GBI (Georgia Bureau of Investigations) agent.
I hoped this wasn’t a good exemple of how the GBI works. Here’s the facts:
The only evidence was the drug itself and a tape recording of the transaction made by a mini tape player in the agent’s purse and the testimony of the female agent. On the tape you could barely hear who was talking, much less be able to identify the suspect because you could hear the crowd in the background.
The male half of the GBI team knew the suspect.
He was stationed across the street from the restaurant in the parking lot of a small office building (which, ironically, has been converted into a police substation!).
The male agent had no camera or video equipment.
After the deal, the male agent followed the suspect, but, since the suspect knew him, he had to drive a considerable distance behind the suspect because the suspect might recognize the agent. This would make sense except that it was after midnight AND the suspect’s car had a heavily tinted rear window. He would have been unlikely to make out the shape of the car much less who was in it.
The suspect had been in trouble with the law before for possession and distribution.
In the deliberation room, all the members of the jury just looked at each other in stunned amazement. How this case was allowed to get this far was amazing. The defense questioned the male agent as to why he was even on the case. The suspect knew the agent WAS an agent. The agent was unable to provide a solid ID of the suspect. Even though he knew it was the guy, he had been sitting IN HIS OWN CAR over 200 yards from the restaurant WITHOUT binoculars and, under oath, could not absolutely swear it was the suspect.
We all agreed that, based on prior convictions that the guy was probably guilty. However, we weren’t there to speculate. We found him not guilty based on the pathetic evidence presented by the state.
My jury duty involved someone accused of possession of stolen property, burglary, and assault on a police officer.
We decided pretty quickly that the assault charge was bogus. The 2 officers who testified gave different accounts of what the guy supposedly did and it was impossible for both to be right. We figured they just threw that one in and didn’t bother to ever coordinate their stories.
The stolen property was obviously a guilty because the police apprehended him outside the warehouse with the goods in the car he was driving.
The burglary thing was pretty clearly a “guilty” to me and almost everyone else, inasmuch as (1) there was a hole cut in the fence (2) a watchman saw someone going in and out of the warehouse putting stuff on a loading dock in the middle of the night, then disappearing back into the building, (3) about 10 minutes later the accused showed up in a car, put the goods in it, and started down the long curvy driveway from the warehouse to the road. Unfortunately for him, the police were waiting for him around the bend and at the end of the drive.
Fortunately for him, however, one of the jury members (a kindergarten teacher as I recall) believed that a different person *could * have committed the actual burglary, met the accused and asked him to go fetch this stuff off the warehouse loading dock in the middle of the night, and that the accused had no way of knowing the stuff was stolen. But tried to evade the police anyway. Umm, right. We also had to explain about 75 times to another juror what the term “accomplice” means. As in if he knew the stuff was burglarized and helped in any way, he was guilty as an accomplice. We had a “hung jury” on that charge.
What I was also surprised at was that there was a different penalty if the stolen stuff was over or under a certain amount, but neither the defense nor the prosecution made any attempt to offer supporting evidence one way or the other.
Actually, I wouldn’t mind serving again; I found it interesting. I got a notice this year about serving on a federal grand jury, and had to call in every couple of days to see if I was needed, but never had to actually go in.
I’ve told this story once or twice at the SDMB. I don’t mind telling it again, because it still strikes me as strange.
I was part of a Coroner’s Inquest jury. I had no idea that a jury had to agree upon the cause of death as ruled by the Coroner. I’m still not certain how the opinions of 12 people too lazy to get out of jury duty stack up against a medical professional, but whatever.
I spent a day with my fellow eleven looking at grisly autopsy photos and hearing sworn testimony from medical professionals regarding the cause of death of 4 people. One elderly food-choking victim, one suicide, one heroin overdose, and one hit-by-a-truck accident victim. In each case but the heroin overdose, the facts were very open and shut, and we ruled quickly. The overdose was by a registered male nurse, and some of us doubted that the overdose was accidental, because he suffered from Crohn’s disease.
In any case, it wasn’t the worst day of my life, and it exempted me from having to do the jury thing for a few years, so yippee.
[QUOTE=spooje]
You do know that the simple fact that a guy is a scumbag doen’t mean he did what he’s accused of, right? That’s why they can’t tell you about his previous scumbaggery.QUOTE]
Oh, I understand that perfectly. BUT I would be lying if I said I didn’t feel better knowing this guy was not going to free any time soon… And I agree with you as far as why they didn’t tell us this… if they had of told us he was up on other similar charges, I probably would have had to tell the judge that I couldn’t be an impartial juror. They DID tell us he had previous larceny convictions, but that didn’t even come up in our deliberations.
I served on a jury two years ago for a murder trial in Brooklyn. We were deciding the fate of two brothers - 19 and 18. It lasted three weeks, and in the end, we found them both guilty.
However, while I will say that I’m happy I served my duty, it was one of the most stressful, emotional times of my life. The trial was incredibly sad, especially when the mother of the victim was on the stand. I found myself in tears a few times. When we finally went in to deliberate, one other person and myself held up the verdict for two days because we weren’t convinced of the second brother’s guilt. We spent two days combing the evidence, and I’m still amazed at the attitudes of the other jurors who were angry with us because they just wanted to ‘go home and get out of this damn courthouse’. We were deciding whether or not to send a nineteen-year-old boy to prison for the rest of his life. I lost a little faith in humanity that day. In the end, we did find him guilty and I stand by my decision, but there’s a part of me that wonders if we made the right decision. It was tough.
When they announced the verdicts, the prosecutor started crying - it had apparently been a very tough trial for her. They dismissed the jury, and as we walked down to the office to have our service validated, I thought about what we had just done, and lost it. Myself and another female juror ended up crying together because we realized that we had just sent two teenagers to jail for the rest of their lives. We still thought they were guilty, but it was difficult to have to decide the fate of others.
I would do it again, but I do hope I never serve on another murder case.
3 juries, in the course of one month. Each trial took one day, into the evening.
first one: drugs, guy was guilty, had an enormous list of prior convictions(which we only found out after we decided he was guilty) and his girlfriend was an idiot(who had been convicted of a drug-related felony).
Second one: attempted rape. hung jury. Most of us thought that the evidence was that the accused was an idiot and guilty, but two were not convinced. One of those was a “the prisons are full of innocent people” and “cops lie so you can’t believe anything they said” person. Significant discussion (in jury room)of what exactly one must do to be arrested for public intoxication. (Accused claimed he ran from police because he was afraid of being arrested for public intoxication, rather than because he’d attempted to rape her). Judge let us know that we were wasting everyone’s time by not coming to a conclusion on guilt or innocence.
Third one: rape. guilty.
This one I could have been persuaded that the guy was not-guilty. Afterall, girlfriend (rape victem) was an idiot and little or no violence had been involved. But, she had a small child and accused was described as having behaved in a strange and violent manner all day. (And after the rape, curled up into a ball and threatened suicide.). Memorable discussion in courtroom and in jury room about what constituted the MH word. (It’s worse than the MF word, which is exactly what you probably think it is. The accused had too much respect for the judge and jury to say the MH word outloud. The judge and jury were intensly curious, but unable to determine exactly what the MH word was).
Blalron: the defendants were accused of conspiracy, wire fraud and money laundering. The amount in question was in excess of $250,000. As I said, they were found not guilty.
If it were a civil trial instead of a criminal trial, do you think the preponderance of the evidence would indicate guilt? Was it just a matter of not being able to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt?
Blalron: Yes, I do think that in a civil trial the jury could have found for the plaintiffs. I know I would have been able to, and I think most of my fellow jurors would have voted that way with little or no hesitation. We didn’t discuss it in quite that way, of course, but no one seemed happy with the verdict we had to give. However, that is something I will never know.
One of the things that had me upset was letting the victims down. I am just glad it wasn’t a case involving violence, I’d feel even worse.
I did a two week stint of jury duty here in the UK about 10 years ago.
Certain aspects of the British system are different from the US, so I suspect the experience doesn’t quite compare. For a start, if it’s a large metropolitan court, you typically report for a fortnight and find yourself in a large pool of perhaps two hundred jurors. Each time they need a jury, it’s randomly selected from this pool. The lawyers can challenge the selection, but this is very, very rare. I found myself serving on 3 different cases over the two weeks: a major sexual assault case, a breaking-and-entering and a punch-up during an inter-pub football match. The first was the most intense, the last the most protracted. The middle one was actually farcical in the way it developed. In each trial the defendent was found guilty.
No case lasted more than 3 days, so there was a lot of hanging around waiting to be called. Take a very, very long book.
Another feature of the British system is that jurors are not allowed to discuss what happened inside the jury room. So I won’t elaborate other than to say that in the first case one of the other jurors turned out to be mentally ill and unstable. Jury deliberations very, very nearly ended in physical violence. But I hope that experience is untypical.
That case actually even struck me as the best example of the system working. But it did however worry me that we were all getting jaded by the end of the fortnight.
Intense highs and boredom. I’m not sure I’d want to do it again, but definitely something that I feel was worthwhile doing.
i did a short stint of Federal jury duty a couple years back. i must say, while i don’t have a problem with the system itself, it left a very bad taste in my mouth regarding the way certain laws appear to be written specifically in order to entrap people.
best i can recall, a guy was on trial for having pawned a gun, maybe other stuff too, while he was on probation. what stuck in my craw, and possibly for several others on the jury also, was that Federal laws specify that there’s some immediate finding of transporting weapons across state lines (Federal offense) if the weapon in question, in whole or part, was manufactured outside the state in question, even if you never take it anywhere yourself. it’s like, if they bust you for ANYTHING, you’re automatically guilty of transporting weapons immediately, just because the GUN was manufactured somewhere else! a major reeking crock, and laws written with entrapment solely in mind, from my POV.
one part of me can (intellectually) understand why the law is framed that way. think Al Capone and his being busted on income tax evasion – they want some sort of hook for grabbing guys that are 'waay too slippery for our good. but that seems to mean that little guys, who may be stupid but basically harmless, get fried bigtime as a fall-out.
and yeah, his defense attorney gave a very good impression of being pissed at us for basically being FORCED to say he was guilty on that count. but unless the judge was deliberately misleading us on the findings allowable on that particular issue, i don’t see that we even had any choice there.
if they never call me up again, i’ll be just as happy.