You get three years off? We only get one - but we only have to report for one day, and there is an automated phone system/web page you check to see if you have to go at all.
I did get on a real one, close to home, half a day, and a pretty non serious criminal case. A pretty good experience, actually.
I was called to sit on grand jury twice, but as I was already working downtown, I could just check in at work, wave bye-bye, and walk over to the courthouse. The first g.j. gig was, I can’t tell you enough, one of the most fascinating and interesting experiences of my life. We were hearing daily testimony every day on a case involving Pure Evil walking this earth, and believe me, everyone showed up on time every day. One lady had to miss a day and came running in the next morning, “what did I miss! what did I miss yesterday!”…The second g.j. was much more boring, shifty used car salesmen and cheap thieves.
I’ve never in my nearly 30 years of eligibility been called for jury duty. I would actually be honored and willing to give my all to it, which is why I’ll never get chosen.
I served on a jury this year in the mental health court, deciding whether to grant the petition of someone trying to get out of a locked down treatment facility. One of my fellow jurors happened to be a guy that lives at the other end of my block. This is in a county with a population nearing 10 million.
The time I got called into a pool before this, I was sitting behind Robert Patrick aka the T-1000 Terminator. He was wearing a belt with “Speed Demon” spelled out in rhinestones on the back. It would have been interesting to go into jury selection with him, but everyone got sent home when the trials for the day were canceled.
Did not make it to the grand jury pool but I am an alternate but for some reason the judge pulled half of the panel as alternates and I am near the back. Unless 50 grand jurors suffer some horrible fate I will not have to serve.
It sounded SO interesting but due to the duration/commitment and distance I am glad I was not chosen. St Louis pulls people from the entire eastern half of the state for federal district court service which is crazy - one guy had to drive over 3 hours!! If it was one day a month or the courthouse was close to work I’d love to do it. I met some of the current panel at lunch who told me they were finding it fascinating, but they were also semi-retired, not just beginning a new job like me, and agreed the lack of job stress heightened their enjoyment.
Bumping because I just received my second summons. If required, I am to report to the courthouse 7 weeks from tomorrow.
Cool. I got to serve as third alternate in a civil case last year. It was interesting overall.
Alternates one and two got pulled into the jury proper, but I was still an alternate at the end, so I didn’t get to vote. Or talk about it before I got the call that the verdict had been decided.
Same here. I have to check after 5:30 pm the day before to see if they need me.
I just got called and I’m a bit worried. I have a philosophical/religiois conviction that I think prevents me from actually convicting someone. Should I say something and risk contempt charges (which I would think would be pretty unlikely, right?) or keep my mouth shut and just vote not guilty?
IANAL, I don’t see how speaking up about how you believe your philosophical/religious would not allow you convict someone would put you at risk for contempt, you’re not being rude to the judge or refusing to answer a question, you’re stating your beliefs…frankly, you will save the lawyers some time and energy…the far worst thing would be agreeing to sit on a jury under false pretenses - you pretty much have to demonstrate you are willing to convict or acquit based on preponderance of the evidence…
You don’t feel you could convict anyone of anything? That’s some really wide-ranging philosophical convictions there. If you were assigned to a civil case, could you decide that, yes, the contract clearly says that A should pay B?
betterlifethroughchemistry is right. Answer the judge’s and the lawyers’ questions honestly. There were about 50 assigned to the case I was assigned to. About a third were released because of hardship or reassigned to a later date because of schedule conflicts. 18 of us were sworn for the first round of questioning. After the questions, three had been dismissed by one of the lawyers, which left the 12 jurors and 3 alternates and everybody else went home.
The judge said that was the quickest he’d seen a jury seated. It’s more common to question most of the room and not uncommon to have to call in the next roomful. So they’re not going to be annoyed if you answer honestly and get dismissed. It’s what they came there to do.
The contempt risk is that they think he’s BSing just to get out of jury duty. Bringing some sort of documentation for those beliefs might be a good idea.
And Yllaria’s right – it might be a civil jury.
Yes, do speak up. But being prevented from convicting anyone? I mean, I see where if the Death Penalty was on the table sure, but Justice only works if the guilty pay.
By the time you’re answering questions, you’ve already either taken a pass on trying to get dismissed for hardship or the judge has decided that your hardship claim isn’t strong enough. In the second case, you should maybe worry that someone would think you were trying to shirk. In the first, you’re probably OK as long as you just answer the questions and don’t try to find some way to bring up your dismissability.
The odds are that you won’t be called in. If you’re called in, the odds are that you won’t be questioned. Of course, odds aren’t certainties and now is the time to think about possible responses.
I just got called for August 24. I’d be happy to serve on a jury, but several factors in my background make it virtually impossible that I would be acceptable to either side in an actual case. (For one thing, I’m closely tied to a very high-profile case in which justice was NOT done.) I’ve called the clerk’s office to say, “Do I really need to show up? For the following reasons, NO attorney is going to empanel me. It’s a waste of everyone’s time.” She told me that it was up to the attorneys; she could not make that decision.
I’ll try to remember to update everyone on the outcome.
OTOH, as I recall, they don’t give a flip about such things if it’s for a grand jury.
I’m a Tolstoyan pacifist (actually, I don’t completely take that label. I’m not a vegetarian and I’m married so not chaste, but most of his concepts I tend to agree with.) I believe that the state inherently rules via violence and I don’t think I could be a direct party to the state inflicting violence on anyone. The entire premise of the state is ‘Do what we want or we’ll find a way to hurt you.’ I recognize that justice is a concept that many people cling to but I think that justice is ultimately a pipe-dream and better left to a transcendent objective arbiter. By nature of our subjectivity and inherent biases, I don’t think humans should sit in judgement of one another. My faith to me calls for mercy and reconciliation, not contributing to an endless cycle of violence.
A civil case is more interesting. I’ve already partially compromised my ideals by favoring wealth redistribution even though that also ultimately relies on the foundation of state violence. So I guess I could probably sit on a civil case since it really only involves the redistribution of wealth providing that the defendant agrees to go along with the decision of the court and I think that that’s a reasonable assumption to make. Ideally, I’m a Christian anarchist and in my youth, I was opposed to any form of state involvement, but as I get older, I find myself drifting further and further into a more socialist camp, so what you gonna do? Isn’t that how it always works, the older you get the more conservative you become?
The last time I had jury duty there was a guy with the same issue. The judge and both attorneys questioned him for about 10 minutes about his beliefs. He was still selected to be on the jury. I ran into him a few weeks after the trial ended, he said being on the jury was one of the best things he had ever done and he would look forward to doing it again. I don’t know how he voted, I ended up being an alternate and was sent home before deliberations.
Seems to me, if asked about something like that, you should speak up. Since your vote relies heavily on what you believe, I’d think both sides would want to know before the trial starts that you’re going to vote not guilty no matter what. I’d imagine even the judge would understand that that’s not going to result in a fair trial.
If anything, you could back off of they push the issue, but at least you’ll know that you said something.
Just finished serving jury duty for the first time in 30 years of eligibility. Only the third time I’ve ever been summoned.
Trial lasted nearly three weeks. It was a criminal case. An extremely brutal murder, but it was a very clear cut case. I honestly thought we would be arguing which charge, not guilt or or innocence. Sadly we had two holdouts who didn’t seem to realize the difference between “reasonable doubt” and “any other scenario one can possibly imagine no matter how improbable”. After two Allen charges, the judge accepted we were deadlocked. It totally sucked. I cried all the way home at the lack of justice for the victim and her family.
I hope your experience is better if you’re chosen.
You should definitely mention it. That is actually among the last questions I ask on voir dire: if anyone feels that they cannot sit in judgment of another person due to religious or philosophical beliefs. In a criminal trial, a jury is there to sit in judgment, and if you can’t do that, thanks for coming and see you later.
Also, at the end of my voir dire, my last question is, “is there a question that I should have asked, something that you’re thinking, ‘boy, he really ought to know this about me sitting on this jury,’ but I just didn’t ask the right question?” That would give you the opportunity to mention it, if I hadn’t asked the more-specific previous question.