As noted, it’s pretty much guaranteed I won’t be serving, and I said on my questionaire that I had pre-decided this case.
Before you get all high and mighty about being impartial, please know that in this case, there is no question that he did it. He lived in an apartment house, and one of his neighbors heard one of his kids screaming “No! Daddy don’t” followed by gunshots. The neighbors called the police, who showed up and tried to gain access. The guy shot through the door at them, who then pulled back down the hall, and eventually fired tear gas in. When they finally got in there, they found his wife and two kids dead of gunshot wounds, and the guy was in the back bedroom, huddled with his guns. He said to the cops “I can’t believe I killed my family.”
Could you be impartial with reported facts like that? There is no allegation that someone else did it, or that something else could have happened. He wants to avoid the chair (and I don’t blame him) so it looks like he’s going to go with the “crazy” defense, which will more than likely end up as life without parole.
This is costing the county (a very poor county, BTW) over $300,000, plus the personal costs of the eventual jurors.
While I understand and agree that a trial by jury is everyone’s right, doesn’t this seem a little…unfair to you?
If both the defence and prosecution agree that he shot his family, I don’t see how being convinced that he shot his family makes one not impartial. Sounds like the question before the jury is whether he was crazy or not, not the facts of what he did.
They’re not “generally in civil court”. They’re always in civil court. There is no such thing as a criminal class action.
They’re also no more likely to be bench trials. Both parties would have to waive jury trial, and certainly the class representatives wouldn’t.
The thing is that the trial is unlikely to take more than a few weeks. The proceedings generally- pretrial hearings, depositions, and so on- will take months or years, plus any subsequent appeals (which will invariably take years).
Of course, very few class actions actually go to trial. Most revert to ordinary civil suits due to refusal of class certification, or are settled before trial.
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You’re anti-death penalty and this is a death penalty case? You have pretty much zero chance of getting selected, what does it matter what the personal cost of jury duty would be for you in this situation?
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That’s not how it works. Jurors are death-qualified if they are not categorically opposed to the death penalty (ie., say they wouldn’t vote for a death sentence under any circumstances) and don’t believe that all capital murder convicts must receive the death penalty.
The OP says she’s “staunchly opposed” but that doesn’t mean she would never impose the DP.
You will be surprised to what extent the things you consider obvious are not necessarily the obvious conclusion of someone else. That’s why there is going to be 12 of you and it is very possible, if not probable that one or more of those 12 will have a very different viewpoint than you. It’s kind of the point and a bit eye opening.
I served on a jury (sort of, ended up being an alternate); at lunch one of the jurors mentioned that she thought the trial was pretty straightforward. She didn’t say what she was thinking in terms of guilt or innocence only that she was expecting everyone to come to the same “obvious” conclusion. I told her she was likely to be surprised at what others think. Those fuckers took all day deliberating… and they came to a verdict that I personally didn’t agree with.
As has already been pointed out, you can’t decide ahead of time that the defendant is “clearly guilty”: that’s what the trial itself is for.
But aside from that, yeah, I sympathize with you. It would be nice if juries in cases like that could be chosen to minimize the disruption to people’s lives, but I don’t know if they could do that and still have an unbiased jury.
If it’s any consolation, the jury members’ lives aren’t being disrupted as much as the defendant’s would be by being wrongly convicted, or even just wrongly accused.
I’m frankly completely confused by the strategy of the defense on this trial. This is estimated to be a 4 week long trial where you’ll be sequestered, and they send you a packet well in advance of your selection date of the who, what, when, where and why of the trial? That’s practically begging you to read everything you can about it before you show up!
So the accused should only get an impartial, fair trial if it isn’t a burden on anyone else? Unfortunately, there are cases that can’t be solved in 60 minutes on Perry Mason, and there are jurors that will be required to sit on those cases.
Is missing birthdays and weddings an imposition? Yes, it is. Is it unfair or to high? No. Everyone deserves a fair and full trial. Sometimes, that’s going to be a PITA for the people involved.
That’s nice, and all, but the US Supreme Court has never said the Sixth Amendment says what you claim it does. It has typically defined impartiality much more strictly, and certainly people who have already made up their minds would not meet any SCOTUS-promulgated definition of “impartial”.
I just finished up a two week murder trial, with the defense stipulating to almost everything. You may think you know what this whole trial is about but you probably have no clue. Judges don’t sequester juries for the fun of it. Defense lawyers don’t want it because it pisses off the jury. A lot of very reasonable people have been working behind the scenes to make this as easy on the jury as possible, while still upholding the law to the best of their abilities. It’s crazy to think otherwise.
A month is easy, Federal grand jury service may only be a few days a week but it is for 18 months!!!
If the federal district you live in is large you may have to drive hours to court.
It is a burden, but it is also a duty and amazingly most people figure out how to make due.
I would say all of the events you are worried about missing are trivial to the cost some family already paid with the loss of a loved one and the potential cost to the accused.
I’m confused about this also. I was up for a death penalty case, selected during my normal jury duty day. We got a big long form to fill out, even longer then usual, but we got nothing about the case except that it was a death penalty one. We were told not to research it, and I did not until I was excused. It turned out that the murder and rape had happened a long time ago and the guy was only caught when his son turned him in. Perhaps the defense would send out information if the case was so notorious that the average juror would be exposed.
BTW, opposition to the death penalty does not work. In the Bay Area lots of people are. One person in my pool was opposed to it on religious grounds, and he made it through 3 rounds. The judge is way too smart to give such an easy out for this case.
However I would hope that the OP can show enough economic hardship to be excused.
When we lived in NJ my wife was called all the time, and was always exempted from having small children at home. I, who could have gone with no problem, never got called in 15 years. I don’t know about other states.
Presumably a lot of single parents could be exempted as well then.
Imagine the arguments at juveline court - “why has this child been living with family friends for a month with no money being given to them for the child’s upkeep, and now the child has acted out through shoplifting and the parent hasn’t appeared with them?”
“The parent is on jury service and cannot go to work or see their child, your honour. No, they can’t guarantee when they’ll come back.”
Actually, it is completely possible to decide for myself, based on available reporting, that this guy is clearly guilty. If I picked for the jury, I would be happy to listen to the evidence offered, but based on the presumed defense of “this guy was beaten as a child and driven crazy” I don’t see the defense working any miracles for this guy. My grandfather did death penalty defense, and I’ve been exposed to a lot of high-stakes criminal law. This guy is vey, very guilty, and has a very slim chance of beating the rap. That being said, I could never in good conscience sentence anyone to death. I’d have to go “not guilty” before I did that.
As a paralegal, this jury questionaire is fascinating. I got the standard jury postcard last fall, and a few weeks later, I got the packet. It has the standard stuff about my prior service, relatives who are cops, my experiences with violent crime, etc. And then, on page 26, it starts going into deep philosophical and moral questions about my beliefs regarding free choice, psychiatry, my feelings on a mother’s use of drugs during pregnancy, traumatic childhood experiences and if it’s better to let one guilty man go free than to publish one innocent person. The crime, with dates and times and full names, is detailed on page 37.
I can only imagine that the defense almost wants jurors to research this, to get the utter horror out of the way ahead of time, so they can hit them with the “He was abused as a child and went crazy” defense. Not a bad strategy when your set of facts is as damning as this.
Yeah, I get it. My objection is to the sequestration, and I ask again - if they are trusting us to understand the expert opinions on the defendant’s mental status, the impact of it on his life leading to a heinous set of murders, etc, why wouldn’t they trust us not to read a paper?
The golden mean fallacy - the idea that a “middle ground” between two extremes is inherently more desirable. In this case, the idea that to be an impartial juror you must not have an opinion even after reviewing the fact of the case.
