getting out of jury duty?

[Chronos]

Quoth Pleonast:

At least, that was my understanding from the judge’s instructions in the case I served on the jury. I am a physicist and part of the case involved weapon ballistics. In deliberation, I felt that some of ballistics testimony was flaky and I told the jury so. But I didn’t make any statements about what I thought was a more reasonable hypothesis.

Interesting… Most of the physicists I know (myself included) immediately get dismissed from jury duty as soon as the court learns we’re physicists. I don’t think I’ve ever heard of any of my colleagues getting as far as actually serving on a jury.

[Steve_MB]

New Wrinkle On Avoiding Jury Duty

[Steve_MB]

@Roadfood

When the first twelve of us were finally called into the actual jury box, we were each handed a list of questions. The judge then went through us one-by-one, asking if there were any questions that we could not answer “yes” to.

One of the questions was along the lines of, “Do you agree to follow the judge’s instructions, even if doing so goes against your personal conscience?”

I honestly answered that, no, I could not do that. The judge got visibly annoyed, and admonished me that following his instructions was my duty as a juror.

I probably would have gotten myself cited for contempt by pointing out the obvious contradiction (i.e. “I am following your instructions by honestly answering the question, Your Honor.”)

[nivlac]

Got my annual summons to jury duty and dutifully reported to court this week. As usual I just answered all questions honestly and respectfully, and as usual, was sent home quickly. I think that the main disqualifier was my analytical and quantitative background. My impression is that the lawyers strongly prefer jurors who they can manipulate emotionally or through information overload, and someone like me who can sift through data and logically decide fact from fiction is not an ideal juror in their minds.

[Bridget_Burke]

I’ve been called many times. Most often, they get enough potential jurors & send the rest of us home. Once I made a panel but the case was plead while we were waiting for jury selection. And once I was picked for a civil case that took 2 days.

In the last 10 years, I’ve “gotten out” of 2 criminal trials because of a close relative who was victim of a violent crime.

[UltraVires]

@t-bonham@scc.net

I know of a case in our county where someone tried one of these obvious statements to get out of jury duty. The annoyed Judge transferred him to a Civil Court trial, where they did place him on the jury.

This is what happened in Palm Beach County, FL. Anyone who tried the I think everyone’s guilty/I hate black people/I can’t be fair/I know a cop/I’m a victim of violent crime/Hang 'em all card was reassigned to Civil Court juries. The judge promised that unlike the rest of the pool when we weren’t picked for a case, we were sent home, these people would stay on jury duty until there was a jury which they could serve on.

Whether he followed through with the threat, I don’t know, but there was a lot of unhappy people shuffling back to the jury room…

[Voyager]

@nivlac

Got my annual summons to jury duty and dutifully reported to court this week. As usual I just answered all questions honestly and respectfully, and as usual, was sent home quickly. I think that the main disqualifier was my analytical and quantitative background. My impression is that the lawyers strongly prefer jurors who they can manipulate emotionally or through information overload, and someone like me who can sift through data and logically decide fact from fiction is not an ideal juror in their minds.

I used to think this, but when I was called for jury duty being an engineer - and a computer scientist - was not an issue at all. Nor has it been for any of my colleagues.

I was selected for one civil case (which got settled five minutes after we were selected) involving a woman who claimed she was injured in a BART elevator. On potential juror was a civil engineer who had served as an expert witness in several cases. He did get dismissed for saying that he would evaluate evidence based on his professional experience - I think the subtext was that he wouldn’t accept evidence he considered to be bs.

My sense was that the judge had heard all the excuses before, and was not letting anyone go because of them. I was also up for a capital case, and lots of people expressed reservations about the death penalty. No one got off for this the first or second round, one person I think got dismissed the third round due to religious opposition. The response to the jurors was usually that the judge understood that everyone did have biases, and admitting them was being honest, but that they can be worked around in arriving at a fair verdict.

[Voyager]

@StuffLikeThatThere

I enjoyed my experience, too. I don’t often say it out loud, since people make horrible faces at me and call me weird. But I liked it.

I did also. I wonder if people who want to get off would be happy if the jury hearing their case were composed of only those too dumb to play the system to escape service.

[suranyi]

I’ve also been called for jury duty many times. As an engineer, usually if I make it onto the panel at all, I’m kicked off pretty quickly. However, once I actually made it onto the jury. That time, by the time I was called to the panel, both lawyers had used up all their preemptory challenges, and they couldn’t find a real reason to kick me off.

Ed

[Pleonast]

That’s what happened for me. Similar to Chronos, I didn’t expect to get seated, but my number came up near the end of the selection process and neither side had challenges left.

[Voyager]

@suranyi

I’ve also been called for jury duty many times. As an engineer, usually if I make it onto the panel at all, I’m kicked off pretty quickly. However, once I actually made it onto the jury. That time, by the time I was called to the panel, both lawyers had used up all their preemptory challenges, and they couldn’t find a real reason to kick me off.

Ed

I live in Silicon Valley, so if they kicked engineers off here there’d be hardly anyone left. None of the jurors were asked about this, though it was on our questionnaires.

[hajario]

I’m and engineer and I was on a jury with three other engineers. After the trial, the lawyers said that they’d like to talk to any of the jurors who wouldn’t mind hanging around. I asked them about the whole engineers on juries thing and they both said that they like engineers on their juries.