I’ve been called for jury duty several times, and have been on three juries.
The first jury was for two counts of malicious mischief (vandalism). The first count was for an incident where a guy got into an argument with his girlfriend while they were in his apartment. She left because she was afraid of him. When she returned she found her apartment had been trashed. In addition to the damage inside the apartment, some of her belongings had been thrown off a balcony, including a stereo that was damaged. A third party witness who was there when the argument happened testified that he saw the defendant throw the stereo off the balcony. The defendant admitted to throwing the stereo, but said it was his property, not hers. He said that after he threw the stereo, he left the apartment but left the door open, and that someone else must have gone in there and done all the other damage.
I found the defendant’s story to be ridiculous, but some of the jurors thought it wasn’t beyond reasonable doubt. What eventually convinced them was that the defendant himself testified he had given the girlfriend the stereo as a gift. That meant he was destroying her property, not his. We convicted him on that count.
The second count was for an incident where someone threw something through the girlfriend’s window one night. No witness testified to seeing the defendant do it, and there was no other evidence to tie him to the crime. We acquitted the defendant on that count.
The second time I was on a jury, the charge was assault with a deadly weapon. Two groups of people had gotten into an argument about whether someone owed someone else $5 for a phono cartridge. They went out in the street to fight it out. One guy (let’s call him “G”) charged at another (“B”), who decked G with one punch. Then G’s girlfriend, the defendant, came up to B and “touched him in the side.” B turned to his friends and said, “the bitch stabbed me.”
Someone called 911, and B was taken to a hospital. The stab wound had punctured his liver, and he had emergency surgery. At some point the knife was found on the gurney that B was on. No fingerprints could be found on the knife because there were no smooth surfaces on it anywhere, not even the blade.
The defense stipulated that a stabbing had happened (meaning that it was accepted by the court as fact). They disputed that the defendant did the stabbing, though they didn’t explicitly offer an alternative theory as to how the stabbing happened.
The defendant admitted to owning a knife, but said the one that was found on the gurney wasn’t hers. At the same time, she couldn’t produce her knife. She said she’d lost it. The knife from the gurney had two blades, one with a broken tip. She said her knife had one blade and one screwdriver.
In all of this, no one testified that they saw the knife in the defendant’s hand.
We deliberated for almost three days. It was a difficult case. There were only two people who could possibly have stabbed G: B and his girlfriend (the defendant). If a reasonable case could be made that B did the stabbing, then we’d have to acquit.
I thought about it for quite a while before concluding that for B to have done the stabbing, it would mean that G didn’t notice he had been stabbed until the defendant came up and touched him on the side, and that B would have had to stab G while he was being punched out. This seemed so unlikely to me as to be unreasonable.
What convinced some jurors was testimony from G that was read back to us in the jury room. The prosecution asked whether he felt himself being stabbed, and he said he didn’t feel in going in, but he did feel it coming out.
The third time I was on a jury was for one count of credit card fraud, and one count of grand theft embezzlement.
The defendant was an employee at Target. She had been caught on video surveillance while working at checkout. She was keying in credit card numbers for cards that weren’t hers, and using those card numbers to buy gift cards that she stowed under the counter. She was also caught on video keying in credit card numbers to pay for merchandise that someone had brought to the register (and again, the card numbers belonged neither to her nor the person with the merchandise).
The store had a security system that flagged suspicious activity. One thing it looked for was credit card numbers that were swiped (this was in the days before chips), and then keyed in later the same day. This is how they decided to put the defendant under surveillance.
The surveillance system was interesting. They had a camera trained on the register where the defendant was working. Everything she did was taped, and all of her keystrokes and other actions at the register were shown at the bottom of the screen. It clearly showed what she was doing.
There was also a witness who testified that he had been mailed a Target credit card that he had never used. He said he decided he didn’t want the card, so he cut it up. This was one of the card numbers that the defendant keyed in. Thinking about it later, I decided this probably meant there was someone working either at Target HQ or at the bank who was stealing info for new credit cards and either selling it, or giving it to confederates.
The defense rested without calling any witnesses or introducing any evidence, which surprised me.
It seemed to me to be an open-and-shut case. One of the jurors didn’t see it that way. He was a dapper little man who, during voir dire, said he owned a business. I was surprised when it turned out he didn’t know what a gift card was. He said he’d once been unjustly accused of a crime, which was a fair reason for him to be skeptical. But there were other problems: he had a hard time understanding that someone could commit two crimes with one act (i.e. he thought we could convict the defendant of one charge, but not both).
During deliberations they brought in a TV and a VCR with the videotaped evidence. One problem, though, was that the tapes had been rewound, not queued up to the relevant parts. Each tape was several hours long, and none of us wanted to watch all of them to find the few relevant minutes. Fortunately, I was sitting right in front of the TV monitor during the trial and had taken notes on the timestamps on the tape.
One of the instructions the judge gave the jury was that we were allowed to take notes, but the jury members should not rely on anyone else’s notes instead of their own memories of the evidence. While we were searching the videotapes to find the relevant portions, the same problematic juror said angrily, “We shouldn’t be relying on his notes!” I explained to him that all we were doing was trying to find the right place on the videotapes, and that I wasn’t trying to tell anyone what the evidence showed. This seemed to satisfy him.
We eventually managed to convince the guy that the defendant was guilty on both counts, and came back with a conviction.
I volunteered/was drafted for the County Civil Grand Jury for a year. Since then I have never been picked- my background is such i am not attractive jury member, and when I begged off once recently (way too far for my old car to do a daily commute) the Judge accepted my reasons noting that I had spent a whole year one.
You have answered your own question. Sometimes there really is no credible defense and the defendant is just hoping something weird happens at trial or during deliberations. This typically happens with the prosecution is not offering any significant deal and the defendant figures there’s no downside in going to trial. Could be a “third strike” or something else that precludes a meaningful plea deal.
I was just dismissed from this jury. Am now reviewing this thread.
At least in the courtroom, I got the flags display corrected: the flags of the USA and California were incorrect (they needed to swap positions) and yesterday I mentioned that to the sheriff’s officer person (what is that person called?). Today they were corrected. I’m a bit of a stickler for that. On my way out the judge thanked me for that.
Anyway my jury duty is completed! Maybe I should really buy a lotto ticket!
At the beginning the judge stressed what a privilege it is to serve on jury duty. As I’ve gotten older, and I’m now retired, I am embracing this. Voting and jury duty: participate and take these responsibilities seriously! Notes to self and to all.
I am absolutely certain he did not say that at all, until later and then I posted to say I’m stopping for now.
It is now clear that in retrospect I should not have gone there. I am certain that I would have remained impartial and objective and unbiased (and, I had 2 taco and only interacted minimally with the staff [ordered quickly, paid; sat, ate and left after 30mins]), but still I shouldn’t have gone. I know this now. Was I being naive? Definitely. People, do not do what I did.
How terrible. That reminds me of my previous case when I was foreman. IIRC there were 2-3 on the fence and the rest of us (incl me) ready to vote guilty. Those were some interesting discussions. It can be a delicate balance between hearing them out and determining why it is they were on the fence, and pointing out the evidence that was presented that addressed their position. I certainly didn’t want to strong arm anyone, but I thought that gently leading them to (and reminding them of) the relevant evidence was the right Irish. While this was some 15 or so years ago and I don’t remember the specifics, because this was a tricky dynamic we as an entire jury needed to navigate through, I definitely remember that much about it. In the end everyone was comfortable with their vote for guilty.
Wow that is a lot! For me I’m pretty sure it’s been 3x total, maybe 4, max.
Interesting. I’ve never participated in that, nor do I think I’d want to. IANAE but that might have Mistrial written so over it (e.g., I voted guilty because, damn, she just looks guilty!).
Brutal. That wasn’t the case, here in San Jose CA. At least not today but that may change. Who knows?
Same goes here in California.
Ditto!
Good one! The next time I’m called I think I should wear a t-shirt with THEY MUST BE GUILTY OTHERWISE WHY WOULD THEY BE HERE??
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Anyway now that I’m dismissed I have my life back. Must admit that I was interested in this case and somewhat looking forward to this process, seeing the wheels of justice turning. Albeit slowly.
The one time I (and hundreds of other people) was called for selection on a murder trial, there were at least a dozen people who said they couldn’t serve because of poor hearing or poor English comprehension. Most of the time, the judge’s comments went like this:
Judge: Can you understand me now?
Juror: Yes.
Judge: Then you’re fit to serve on a jury.
There were a couple of people who genuinely didn’t seem to understand English and their service was deferred for 3 (?) years.
Some people like to say, “jury duty is for people who are too stupid to get off of jury duty”. The people who say this are unmitigated assholes who don’t deserve to live in a free society. All of the people who I served with were smart enough to get out of it and, for the most part, not happy to be there. That said, it would be trivial to get out of it. You just have to say that you don’t think that you can be unbiased. I have sat through many voir dires and judges seem to be happy to get rid of whiners in my limited experience.
To be clear, there are many people with very valid reason for why they can’t serve including that it would put them in financial peril or legitimate health concerns.
I’ve mentioned this before, but the first (of 2 so far) times I got a jury duty summons, my panel (about 30 people out of probably 300 in total) got called into court twice for potential jusy selection for 2 separate trials. In the first, one of the prospective jurors asked to be excused. The reason he gave was that he was the sole caregiver for his ailing mother. The judge asked him what he did for a living and the answer was that he gambled on horse races. He was excused.
I was summoned once when I was my dad’s sole caregiver. I was able to get an excuse from my dad’s doctor that exempted me from jury duty for a couple of years.
I was once summoned for jury duty for a case where one of the witnesses had been drinking. The court wanted to know people’s attitudes about alcohol, so in the questionnaire we filled out before we were called into the courtroom, there were questions about whether we drank, how much, whether we had any moral objections to alcohol, etc.
I don’t drink. During voir dire, the judge asked me why, and I explained that I don’t want to use anything that affects how my mind works.
When it was the lawyers’ turn to question me, one of them started off by saying, “So you say you have a problem with alcohol.” I responded, “That’s not what I said. I said I don’t drink.” Not long after that, the lawyer excused me on a peremptory challenge.
I wondered at the time why the first thing he said to me was an insult (whether he meant it that way or not, that’s how I took it). I suspect he was trying to get a reaction from me, to give a reason to have me excused for cause, because there’s a limited number of peremptory challenges for each side.
I got called to Federal Jury Duty and about the first thing the judge did was dismiss all college students as finals were starting the next day. The next thing he did was ask the very pregnant woman when she was due. The next week, and she was willing to serve - we’d been told the trial would only last the week - but they couldn’t dismiss her fast enough.
Was this a small town with only one college in it? In schools that do trimesters instead of semesters they don’t line up anywhere need what semester colleges do, & even all of the semester schools aren’t on the same exact schedule.
I’ve been called a few times. One of the times, the defendant was a client of the attorney I worked for, so I was dismissed based on that.
The second time I made it to voir dire, it was a case of a mentally ill woman moving to remove her guardian/conservator and let her go live her own life out on the streets. I was voir dire’d and one of the questions was if I had any opinions about the mental health systems of California, and if so, to elaborate. I wrote that I was still angry with Reagan for closing the state mental health hospitals and turning sick people out to wander and starve on the streets. I thought that this honest reply would get me kicked off, but it didn’t.
The trial was brief. First we heard that she had walked out of her facility a year ago and had disappeared for months. She eventually turned up emaciated and filthy back at her facility and could give no coherent account of where she had been. We heard testimony from her doctor who stated that she had no grasp at all on reality, and from the woman herself. It was clear from her speech and behavior that she would have been unable to care for herself and would be at the mercy of any dangerous people in a homeless camp, so we found that she should stay in conservatorship.
It was a sad trial. I felt for the woman who wanted freedom, but I also felt it would be a death sentence to turn her out on the streets.
I was imagining a town like Iowa City or Madison. The vast majority of college students would be at the same school.
Also, I’m not sure kitap was intending to be precise. I would guess the judge asked for all students who had finals coming up to identify themselves and then dismissed them. I can see someone describing that as “the first thing the judge did was dismiss all college students as finals were starting the next day.”
I was called for jury duty about 25 years ago. It was a case where a guy driving a truck was injured while using a piece of equipment that was apparently “defective” in some way. Prior to voir dire, I called my wife and let her know that I expected to be dismissed pretty quickly in the process. Here’s what actually happened:
Attorney: “Is there any reason why you feel that you can’t be fair and impartial in deciding this case?”
Me: “Well, I’m a private investigator who works on workmen’s comp and personal injury cases. We usually work for the insurance companies seeking to disprove actual injury. But I think I’m a pretty fair-minded person.”
Surprisingly, neither attorney seemed to have a problem with this and I was seated. When we came back after lunch for the start of the trial, we were told that the parties had settled. I suspect that one side or the other did not care for the final jury.
It was here in Tucson. So, the University of Arizona. He asked who was a college student - maybe 3 people raised their hands - and he dismissed them saying it was because finals were starting the next day.
Seems like this topic may have come up recently, but I’m not going to check now.
I was on one criminal case, armed robbery/car theft/kidnapping, a long time ago, in Cook County IL, where I grew up. I was 19. Everyone I knew said they’d never take me–”they don’t want teenagers on juries.”
So I was shocked when I was picked. In retrospect, it seems clear that both sides saw in me exactly what they wanted to see–both looked at me, a white male college student living in the city of Chicago, and decided based on those characteristics that I’d support their side.
Also I was foreman. This was not because I was among the smartest, hippest people on the planet, or indeed for my leadership skills or my brainpower. Someone said, “Who will we choose for foreman?” Someone else said, “Let’s just make it easy and pick the tallest person on the jury.” Eleven people looked at me. (I looked at Mr. Hennessy.) Hey presto, I was foreman. We didn’t deliberate long, and I didn’t get to read the verdict aloud in the courtroom–disappointing but oh well.