However,as someone who served an ENTIRE year on a Grand Jury, I find all your whining about a few days disgusting. It’s your civil duty, damnit. OK, I’ll buy a delay, if the Judge will give it to you, but you should serve. Especially IF you’re a SDMBer, as you KNOW your opinions are valuable.
My brother in Chicago has gotten out of serving twice just by taking his bible with him and telling everyone concerned that he hates lawyers and wishes them all dead, which is true. I wish I’d get called just once for the experience.
“If it’s free, it’s for me !”
Danielinthewolvesden - Yes, I will definitely serve. I actually look forward to serving. The problem is the timing. Without getting into too much detail, my business is 6 months old and it’s finally time to move it out of my apartment and ramp it up in a significant way. To lose even a couple days to jury duty would bother some of my clients that pay monthly/weekly retainers. In addition, serving on the day the court specified would jeopardize a business trip to San Fran that I’ve been planning.
And this $65 a day stuff is bullcrap. I can make more playing my guitar in Central Park.
“Hand me my wallet…It’s the one that says ‘Bad Motherf**ker’ on it.”
THESPOS: They only gave me $20/diem. How much do they pay you to vote? I believe you have a good case for a delay, but be honest. Judges are pretty reasonable once they think you’re not scamming them. Oh, and you guys, the Judge KNEW you were scamming him, do you think this is the 1st time he’s heard that BS? He just didn’t want to take the time to hold you in contempt.
Wow. That is admirable. I hope the carriage of justice in this case was worth the sacrifice for civic duty.
Here’s a bit of cynicism about the jury process from someone who is planning to be a dutiful citizen when his time comes:
My problem is jury instruction. I don’t know how often this happens and I understand that there are procedures that must be adhered to in presenting and defending cases in court - but when a judge or an attorney tells the jury that “regardless of what you think may have happened here, you are required by the law to find that…(yadda yadda)”
Isn’t the principal of a jury trial that the jurors represent the wisdom of the people when the law is applied? If the law overrules the judgement of the jury, why have a jury?
I acknowledge my ignorance on this point, and so I’ll resist the urge to dig a bigger hole at this time.
Although proponents of jury nullification will disagree strongly, if you’re a juror, your job is to decide the facts , not the law. The judge decides the law and tells you, the jury, what the law is. The jury’s job is vote one way or the other.
If you didn’t get instructions, you might as well start having the jurors investigating the cases while they’re at it.
In Los Angeles County, the pay is a whopping $5 per day plus a paltry mileage allowance, which is only paid one way.
As was correctly pointed out, jurors are NOT supposed to offer judgement as to the law - they are the finders of fact. Their job is to weigh the credibility of witnesses, resolves conflicts in evidence, and determine the facts of what happened.
But if, as an example, the parties enter into a stipulation regarding some facts, then the jury no longer needs to decide them. If the law provides that a certain set of circumstances creates a conclusive presumption, then the jury cannot find facts to the contrary.
That said, juries have the ability to disregard those instructions and return a verdict in line with what they believe should happen. But they don’t have the legal right to do so, and when they do, it’s in violation of their oath.
- Rick
You’d think this was true, but it didn’t work for me.
After 4 days of cooling my heels in the “lunch room” (only a candy/chips machine) with the unwashed steerage folk from the Titanic, I finally saw a courtroom.
For four hours I heard sob story of the EX-wife of a guy who died in a tiny trailer when he covered all the wall heater’s vent holes with Duct tape and was overcome by gas leaks. SHE wanted to sue the gas station that sold him the carry-out propane tank, because the generic warning lable covered basic tank safety but not taping over vent holes.
This I learned while they were selecting the jury, endlessly going over who had ever rented, who had medical background, etc.
So, I thought I’d do the station owner a favor and stay on the jury to get him away from this scam artist lawyer.
But, it turned out I was the 14th person selected. Second alternate! I get to vote only if two others get sick during the estimated 2-day trial.
So I try to get out by stating my opinon was already set, the whole case was foolish, and that it seemed like a travesty of justice just for the judge not to have dismissed it sooner. The judge didn’t care. I sat through 4 days of the complaint paragraph above being repeated 285 times. Then, since there were still 12 original jurors left to vote, I was excused, and never found out what happened.
Now I just don’t deal with the notice. They can’t prove it was ever delivered, so I can always play dumb later.
I had a truly bizarre jury experience that defies most of the advice given in this thread.
Intial Premise: I WANT to serve on a jury. Besides civic duty, etc., I just think it’s pretty cool.
I was called 'bout two years ago. I was selected for voir dire to pick a jury in a medical malpractice case. Now, I’m the son, brother, and brother-in-law of doctors. My dad’s been sued for malpractice (he won). I’m an attorney, and for years (as a paralegal) I worked on Social Security disability cases, so I can read a medical chart. It literally got to the point that the attorney’s would ask, “has anyone, besides Mr. Green, ever had experience with …”
They still picked me, 'cause I honestly told them that, despite my background, I believed I could be impartial.
In the end, the damn case settled. Ah, well.
Yes. Yes. Painful to see my ignorance so shamelessly displayed and effectively curtailed. If I had given this subject enough thought and a bit of research, I would have narrowed my objection to the idea of a ‘conclusive presumption’. That sounds like the name for the sort of example I would be most annoyed by. And I will assume that the nature of and objections to such presumptions are well documented. Thanks for the slap.
Not one of you posted the really good answer to this, so I am guessing that most of what you people have said is apocraphyl at best.
One thing you should know first. My sister is a judge her in New Jersey and they get really sick and tired of all the jurors coming up with lame excuses for not serving. Believe me they have heard it all, and getting a judge upset with you isn’t good. As some people pointed out, if you lie with that dopey excuse of yours, you could be prosecuted for perjury, but it’s not likely! What is more probable is that the Judge thinks you’re goofing around in his/her courtroom and he sticks you with a contempt of court charge. And that one will be almost impossible to get out of AND it will be intended to serve as a warning to all the others.
The very best way to get out of jury duty is to plan ahead. Here in NJ you can get excused for being on the First Aid Squad, the local volunteer fire company or other civic things like that. It varies from state to state so look around and check it out - and don’t do what the other idiots in this column suggested!
Idiots? ouch.
I think a lot of these more flippant suggestions were aimed at getting yourself struck by one of the attorneys rather than excused by the judge. Everyone has room to find fault with the process - the jury pool for the interruption of their pursuit of happiness and the indignity of having to pay to park at the courthouse, the attorneys for the dearth of suitable jurors in the pool, the judge for lame excuses and juries who want to ‘wrap it up’ or take the law into their own hands. It’s certainly a big mess when the right to a jury trial is such a burdon and when the sense of civic duty in the population is hardly up to the task.
Dyst…
Yeah you’re right of course. But, it’s leading to a system where they’re going to pick people by lottery and the defence and prosecution will have to make due with what they get from a pool. Right now I’m a member of the First Aid Squad and the volunteer fire department so I get two exemptions. On the one hand it’s fair because I’m doing civic duty others won’t (or can’t) do but on the other hand we should all do our fair share in this thing and not try to avoid “getting out of it”.
choens, we do not refer to each other as “idiot” in General Questions.