I am glad my first jury summons was full monty. I had to go in, I was selected as a juror, we heard the trial – civil, so the stakes were only money not someone’s freedom – and we reached a verdict.
Subsequent summons have all been short-circuited at some point in the process. The furthest was when we heard the prosecutor’s case over a couple days, broke for lunch, then came back to find the judge had dismissed the trial without the defense having to present its case.
I agreed, actually. When the prosecutor rested, I thought, “That’s it? I’ll listen to the defense but I’m doubtful now I could reach a guilty verdict.”
Got my summons for jury duty end of October. Not like I’ll ever serve. Most of the time I either don’t have to report or get kicked loose once they panel everything. The farthest I’ve ever gotten in the process was initial questioning, when I told the court I was a debate coach. The judge jokingly asked if I was going to be grading the lawyers on their presentations, and I said yes.
I was the first person dismissed. As I left I commented “Cowards” to the laughter of the court.
I just got my first summons ever in my ~30 years of adulthood. I share the same first and last name as a local law enforcement officer, so I always guessed that would keep me off of potential juror lists. But maybe someone finally did some cross-referencing and said “Hey, this Control-Z has a different address than the officer.”
That’s the way it is around here, too. Although really, they say the message will be there after 5, but usually it’s also there after 3. You can tell if it’s been updated by the next call-in date. They never say tomorrow, it’s always a specific date to call.
I’ve had to call in several times, but only had to go in twice. The first time turned out to be a six month long grand jury and I had deadlines at work that could result in the City having to forfeit grants. I think I needed three weeks before I could get the project finished or in someone else’s hands. The judge put me back into the next pool to be called, and then it was another round of calling in but not having to go.
The other time, I ended being the #3 alternate. Alternates #1 & 2 had to step up into the jury, but I never got to deliberate. It was a pro se civil case. She was acting as her own lawyer taking her lawyer to court to argue that she shouldn’t have to pay him even though he had gotten her a good settlement on contingency. Two other lawyers who had worked on the case before him had taken her to court for non-payment and gotten liens on her house and car.
I learned a few things.
The judge will tell you, several times, that you’re not supposed to make any judgement about the verdict. You can make judgements about the testimony and evidence, as they’re presented, but not about the verdict. This is like not thinking about a pink elephant.
In a typical contingency contract, the money from any settlement goes into an escrow account and is disbursed from there according to the contract. So you can’t stiff your contingency lawyer unless you take them to court and accuse them of malpractice.
They won’t tell the alternates the verdict until it’s been entered into the record and released as public information. After that, our County calls any hanging alternates to let them know, which is nice.
The actual lawyer represented himself, too. He made sure he asked all prospective jurors if they had any work experience with contracts. I was surprised that the plaintiff didn’t dismiss any of us who did.
I have a tip if your jurisdiction does the call-in the night before thing.
The way it worked in my jurisdiction is that the week you were on call, you called the number ever night starting the Friday of the week before.
You got a pre-recorded message , something like - if your juror number is between R001 and R125, report to the courthouse at address x. If your juror number is between R126 and R800, report to the courthouse at address y. If your juror number is between R801 and R5000, you do not have to appear Monday. Please call this number again on a Monday after 5.
Every week the juror numbers had a different leading code, ( to alert people that may have called in on the wrong week, but the number always started at one and the message always gave the last juror number.
You generally got the mailing with your juror number 4-6 weeks before you date.
If your jurisdiction works this way, here is my tip. Starting calling that number as soon as you get the notice. You will be able to tell how many jurors they are sending notices to every week, how many they are calling every day and how many with high numbers never even have to appear.
If you do this for a couple of weeks you will also note how much variance there is week to week. By the time your week hits, you should be able to make some sort of educated guess along the lines of —definitely not Monday, maybe Tuesday or Wednesday, maybe as late as Thursday, definitely before Friday.
Normally, though, if a person doesn’t need to report when they call Tuesday night (for Wednesday’s panel), the odds are very good that no one will be called in for Thursday or Friday, and they’re in the clear.
In my jurisdiction jurors frequently got called in the last few days.
Because you were instructed to set aside TWO weeks for your jury service.
You only had to call in during the first week, but you were expected to be available for a trial the following week. So you might call in on Thursday, be instructed to come in on Friday and get selected for a trial that started the following Monday.
Where I am, it’s one week. You call in the Friday night before and then Monday Night, Tuesday Night, etc. The last time I was juror 425 and they called 300 people for Monday’s jury, then 110 for Tuesday. Then when I called Tuesday night, they said no one was needed Wednesday. When I called in Wednesday night they said no jurors were needed the rest of the week.
Even if one doesn’t serve on a jury during that week and is only on stand-by due to calling, they won’t be called for another 7 to 8 years.
Which flies in the face of jury nullification. Juries are the only people involved in the case – besides the defendant – who are not officers of the court. They are supposed to be there to decide the justice of the case, not just what the facts are. Otherwise, the judge would be far better suited to reach a verdict on what the law is and what the facts are and the jurors just window dressing.
True, but a jury supposed to do that when they deliberate, not while the evidence is still being presented. I can see the point. Stay open to later evidence and not locked in by a premature conclusion.
On the other hand, when someone is representing themself, by the third day it’s really hard not to have come to an opinion about how they think. One more reason not to represent yourself. If the argument is shaky, and you have a lawyer, it will be blamed on the lawyer.
But if your quote is accurate, the judge was telling you to make a verdict on strictly what the law is, not the justice of applying the law. If the judge had truly said you’re not supposed to make any judgement about the verdict, just the testimony and evidence, it is an attempt to abrogate the whole reason for the jury’s existence.
Yes, you’re not supposed to be reaching a conclusion until all of the evidence is presented, but this can be difficult. As I mentioned in another thread, I sat as juror in a criminal case where the prosecution’s case was incredibly weak. It was about a day, from lunch after the jury had been selected to lunch the next day and when the prosecutor rested, I thought, “That’s it? I’ll listen to the defense’s side but I’m going to find it tough to reach a guilty verdict now!” The looks of the other jurors looked much the same as mine.
Turned out we didn’t have to hear the defense’s case. When we came back from lunch we had to cool our heels for an extra hour then came into to court room where the judge told us he had dismissed the case.
In theory I just ended the second week of grand jury duty in the local federal court. But the first day I was instructed to call in the recorded message said that my “term had ended” and I didn’t need to call in any more, so that was anti-climatic.
I know a defense lawyer who underlines the importance of the presumption of innocence by asking the very first juror, during voir dire, “As you sit there now, sir/madam, is my client guilty or innocent?”
If they hem and haw or say “Well, I’ll need to see the evidence before I decide that,” he firmly but politely says, “Actually, sir/madam, right now, before any evidence at all has been presented, my client is presumed innocent. That means that you have to consider him innocent. And right up to the time that you and your fellow jurors might decide otherwise, after the close of the prosecution and defense cases, if that time ever comes, he retains that presumption of innocence.”
Not true.
Here’s the pattern jury instruction from Washington State (other states have similar language)
Having taken your oath as jurors, you are now what the law calls officers of this court. As such, you must not let your emotions overcome your rational thought process. You must decide the case solely on the evidence and the law before you and must not be influenced by any personal likes or dislikes, opinions, prejudices, sympathy, or biases, including unconscious bias. Unconscious biases are stereotypes, attitudes, or preferences that people may consciously reject but may be expressed without conscious awareness, control, or intention. Like conscious bias, unconscious bias, too, can affect how we evaluate information and make decisions.
Which kind of points out the erosion of what a jury is for. As I said above, if all the system is interested in is the law and its application, trials would be better served as a star chamber where only the prosecution and defense attorneys are present, along with the judge. That way the judge can reach a verdict solely on the evidence and the law before you and must not be influenced by any personal likes or dislikes, opinions, prejudices, sympathy, or biases, including unconscious bias, something us plebes are not a likely to do.
That way, we won’t be bothered by having to serve on a jury and even the defendants need not be present – they’ll learn of the verdict after the trial is over. This is not the way we do things in this country.
The erosion started with Sparf v. US, a 5 - 4 SCOTUS decision with one of the takeaways being that, yes, jurors have the right to make a decision on factors rather than the law, but not telling them they have this right does not mean a mistrial is indicated. As the decades have gone by, this right has become further and further eroded until we get garbage, like your Washington jury instructions.
One analysis I’ve read of the decision was that the intent was supposed to make it easier to convict labor radicals, who were running around throwing bombs and shooting cops at the time. One objection some raise is that the hypothesis was what led all-white juries refusing to convict some KKKer who’d murdered an uppity colored person.
“In 2017, the Ninth Circuit upheld the first three sentences of a jury’s instruction and overruled the last two. The jury instructions were: “You cannot substitute your sense of justice, whatever that means, for your duty to follow the law, whether you agree with it or not. It is not for you to determine whether the law is just or whether the law is unjust. That cannot be your task. There is no such thing as valid jury nullification. You would violate your oath and the law if you willfully brought a verdict contrary to the law given to you in this case.” But it deemed this a harmless error and affirmed the conviction.”
The last time I was called (I didn’t get seated, or even get called up for further questioning), the charge was selling marijuana. This was fairly recently; several states had already legalized recreational marijuana, and NY was debating it. Several jurors said they weren’t sure they could convict on a charge for something that might shortly be legal. The judge gave all of us a speech in which he said, in effect, that jurors weren’t supposed to decide according to what they thought the law ought to be, or according to what they thought the law might be in the future. Jurors were supposed to decide based on what the law was right then.
I don’t think that follows. I think the reason for a jury is that different people, even using the same standards of what counts as evidence, may disagree in any specific case as to whether the evidence is sufficient for conviction. The evidence often isn’t clearcut – it’s necessary to decide, for instance, whether witnesses made accurate identifications; if witnesses differ, which ones are lying or mistaken; whether it’s likely that defendant, as the defendant claims, was doing x for y reason instead of for z reason; whether defendant is lying when they say they didn’t know about q; and so on. Convincing a dozen people all in the same direction is harder to do, and ought to require stronger evidence, than convincing one person. And if all the people involved in the decision are professionally judges and/or law enforcement, then they’re all coming from the same perspective; and may, for instance, all think a defendant’s behavior is odd and indicates guilt, even if in the defendant’s community that behavior would be considered normal. The jury’s supposed to provide a variety of perspectives.
Towards the end of Prohibition prosecutors were getting a conviction rate of bootleggers with overwhelming evidence against them of only 60%. It’s one of the factors that led to the Repeal. Now, three generations later, almost everyone has forgotten they have that right.
Of course, as you did point out yourself a few posts ago, the conviction rate for white people accused of crimes against black people was also pretty terrible.