Jury Duty

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
21

Six person jury in a juvenile case of sexual assault. I was excited by the opportunity to serve and to see how the justice system works. It turned out to be one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. A teenager was accused of repeatedly molesting his young (like six or eight years old) half-sister. The cop who investigated it was a co-worker and friendly acquaintance. (I was sure I wouldn’t be accepted for the jury, but I was.) He screwed up the investigation, and the ADA who prosecuted (who I’ve since become friends with) did a lousy job. (Apparently he was a bit hamstrung by the judge’s decisions that the jury never saw, but he still could have done a better job.) In the end, we all agreed that the accused had probably done it, but there simply wasn’t enough evidence. It was painful because he obviously needed treatment that he might not get without being convicted, the family would get no closure, and the little girl might never trust adults again. Her friend who heroically came forward with the story and testified in the trial might never trust adults either. But none of us could say that we knew beyond a reasonable doubt that the boy had done it.

The worst part of it all was seeing how much greater a role is played by the skill of the attorneys than the actual evidence. A better prosecutor could probably have gotten us to convict. The (private) defense attorney was smart and slick and much more skillful, but he would have screwed his case if he’s been up against a better opponent: he spent most of the trial trying to cast suspicion on his client’s cousin. He couldn’t understand why the witnesses kept saying that this cousin wasn’t at a party where the girl was alleged to have been molested. He kept getting more and more desperate as he asked each family member in succession, “Are you absolutely sure” this cousin wasn’t at the party? Finally when he was examining the very last witness he realized that he was asking about the WRONG COUSIN!:smack:

22

I once made it all the way to voir dire, but didn’t get picked. I was only 18 at the time so that could have had something to do with it. I’m glad I didn’t get picked though. It was a murder case where the defendant claimed self-defense. It was on the street and both the victim and the defendant had guns. Also, from what I could tell from the papers, there seemed to be no witnesses. Eventually guy pled so maybe there was more evidence than there seemed.

23

I’ve been on several juries.
DUI (convicted)
foreman on a murder trial (convicted)
Legal malpractice (Case blew up during testimony ala Perry Mason. Truly an amazing day in court)
One or two other lawsuits.
The worst juror I ever deliberated with was an engineering prof from UCLA. The man was absolutely terrified to make a simple decision. All 12 of us would agree on a point and when it came time for a vote, he would bring up and want to argue a point he had agreed to an hour previously.
:rolleyes:

24

I’ve been summoned to jury duty five times within the last eight years or so, and have been on three or four juries.

Nothing really interesting or spectacular happened, though it was nice to be able to meet people and catch up on my reading!

25

I served on a jury when I was nineteen. It was the most boring civil suit ever. The plaintiff had sold stock for a start-up electrical company and was now suing the company, claiming they had promised him benefits he had never received. It was three weeks of he said/she said financial stuff.

I learned an important life-lesson though: not everybody thinks the way that you think. At the end of the arguments, I felt that the case was pretty open and shut. The plaintiff had virtually no evidence for his claims, and he couldn’t even keep his story straight on the stand. He just seemed hopelessly confused. I was going to vote in favor of the defendant, and I thought that my fellow jurors would automatically do the same.

Boy, was I surprised! Nine of the other jurors agreed with me, but the two older ladies on the jury had a completely different view. From their perspective, this evil company had taken advantage of this poor, confused man. One of the ladies and I had become good friends. We even had lunch together several times a week. But since we were not allowed to discuss the trial, I never knew what she was thinking about the case. We had completely opposite viewpoints!

Since then, I have been called to jury duty, but never called up for selection. Since my employer does not pay for jury duty, I think they just shuffle my name to the bottom of the pile. So I just spend eight hours in a room once a year.

26

I was called up once a couple of years ago. I work evenings/nights and jury duty is during the day naturally so that part was not so much fun. But it was interesting seeing how the whole process works. The last day (of course) I was seated on a jury for an assault/breaking and entering. Two women, both with babies by the same man (using the term loosely). One woman filed a restraining order against the guy because he beat her. He violated the order by coming back around and so went to jail. Second woman, upset that her baby daddy went to jail, beat up the first woman. The lawyers eventually did a plea deal so we never got to the deliberation part. It was instructive watching the lawyers (three of them) at work. And I was enormously disappointed with the local police and their lack of professionalism. A lot of waiting around but plenty of chocolate in the jury room made up for it.

27

I think I may have written about this here before, but I’m feeling too lazy to find the link.

Anyway - I’ve been called many times for state court and gone to voir dire at that court many times, but in every instance have been excused by one of the lawyers on one of their peremptory challenges. (A peremptory challenge being where they can excuse someone from the panel without having to give an explanation.)

But the one time I’ve been called to federal court I was placed on a jury, as an alternate. This was during the late 1980s. The case involved a large group of defendants who were charged with trafficking of large amounts of marijuana. Since this was such a large group, they were being tried in groups of four at a time. (If I recall correctly, the entire group of defendants was over 20 individuals.)

The major highlight that I recall was that one of the defendants in this particular trial clearly had no involvement with the case; his lawyer demonstrated his client had been living and working for years several states away from where all of the marijuana trafficking activities had taken place. I was never clear on how the government came to arrest this individual.

What with there being four defendants in this trial, it ran quite long. I was the third of four alternates. During the course of the trial two jurors were dismissed due to personal situations that arose, so I was still an alternate when deliberations began. Alternates do not participate in deliberations, so alternate number four and I were released. Sitting through all that testimony and not being able to deliberate was somewhat frustrating, but I was happy to have had the experience nevertheless.

28

It’s something of an accepted truth within the profession that a lawyer on the jury won’t consider the evidence, he’ll critique your performance. Not many folks want that.

I’ve been summoned four times, excused twice, sent home because they didn’t need so many jurors twice. On the jury questionnaire, I always put “prosecutor” down as my job; no defense attorney in his right mind would put a prosecutor on the jury.

29

I live in a small county, where lawyers already know everybody or it’s easy to find out stuff. For years I coached youth league baseball, football and basketball.

Most of the cases that I’ve been in the jury pool on were trials of drug dealers. It seemed like the defense lawyers used up their peremptory challenges thusly:

If you were a teacher, coach, scout leader, or otherwise involved in youth activities you were automatically struck from the jury. Guess they think such folk would hang their clients.

Anyway, I did serve on a jury that convicted a guy for hitting his neighbor with a tree limb in a drunken dispute. It was fun. The judge asked the (obviously drunk) defendant how long it had been since he’d had a drink. The guy proudly replied “months, yer honor!”. Then at a break, we watched the guy go out to his car, pull a bottle from under the seat and take a long pull. Now, that was cool!

30

Yes. I once saw a guilty man get a mistrial because his lawyer pulled a psychological sleight-of-had trick to plant a “reasonable” doubt in the mind of one juror.

31

I’ve only ever been called once, and I got tapped to serve in a criminal case. It was a drug trafficking case and was actually pretty interesting. I got to see what 300 pounds of pot looks like up close. And smells like, too. The whole courtroom was craving cookies by the end of that day!

I was very lucky in that the trial only lasted 3 days and we didn’t deliberate for long either, so I started my jury duty on Monday morning and was released before lunch on Friday. I enjoyed the experience and would gladly serve again.

32

I served on a sequestered jury in an aggravated rape case last year. I had thought that my background and education would case the defense to seek to have me dq’d (I’m a white male with a Ph.D.) but it seemed that both the prosecution and defense were seeking the most qualified people they could find. In addition to me, we had two MDs, another Ph.D., a woman who does real-time transcription for deaf college students as she works to become a court reporter, two retired executives, and other professionals. In a city that is 55%-65% black, we had an evenly split jury in terms of race and gender.

The case occurred on Father’s Day afternoon in 2005 and the trial was delayed by Hurricane Katrina. The curator of the Tulane University art gallery was working alone in her office when two armed young men (then aged 18 and 19) forced entry into her office and spent 1/2 hour raping her orally, vaginally, and anally at gunpoint at the same time. She testified that she finally decided that death would be better than being used in such a fashion, so she pushed over the chair of the attacker in front of her, wheeled around to get away from the attacker behind her, and sprinted for her office door. The young men decided to flee, but the one we wound up convicting ended the attack by pistol-whipping her in the face as he fled.

The state wound up prosecuting the case since the victim’s brother worked for the Orleans Parish DA’s office. The defendent was represented by a professor at the Loyola Law School and by two L3 students who worked as interns for the Loyola Law Clinic.

Given that we were sequestered for two nights and that we spent the majority of our time together, we were able to vote quickly for a foreman (one of the black MDs) and move into deliberations. The case came down largely to the victim’s testimony and we struggled with the lack of physical evidence, much of which was damaged by flooding from Katrina. I was impressed with how we analyzed the facts of the case as we had them. None of us were happy about convicting the defendent, though it was a unanimous verdict. Louisiana has a mandatory minimum life in prison without parole for persons tried and convicted of aggravated rape, so this young man will spend the rest of his life at the Louisiana Penitentiary in Angola, Louisana. It’s a rather infamous old Southern prison farm.

After we reached our verdict and were released and were able to see and read the news, we learned that we made the right decision. The reason the police came up with the suspects is because the attackers were turned in via the Crimestoppers program. Violent crime in New Orleans rarely crosses racial lines, and the defendent and his accomplice bragged to their neighborhood how they’d gone to Tulane and raped a white woman. While people in that neighborhood may turn a blind eye towards gang and drug violence (due largely to their fear of retaliation for cooperating with the police), in this instance that fear was not enough to prevent at least one person from reporting the crime.

Each attacker had prior arrests, so the police were able to put together a photo lineup within a few days of the attack and, according to testimony from several sources, the victim picked out the two perpetrators right away. With that identification, Tulane police were able to search security tapes that showed the defendents on campus at the time of the attack.

My big surprise was that I had anticipated a great deal of intellectual savvy from the attorneys and from the law students - - savvy that was lacking at times. While I think the defendent had competent counsel, it amazed me that the defense chose to base their case on hair style and foreskin rather than on reasonable doubt and alibis. The law professor is originally from Jamaica and made much of the sematics in the victim’s various accounts where she referred to the more violent of the two attacker’s having “twists” “chee-weez” and “short dreds” - - as if the terms are so specific as to cast doubt on the reliability of the witness.

I’m still bothered by the case and by the experience. While I was pleased to do my civic duty, that was the only satisfaction to it. Convicting this man effectively ends his life. Convicting this man does nothing to restore the victim’s dignity and psyche. Yes, justice was served, but in this case rendering justice really doesn’t fix anything.