That is bullshit of the highest order. They should get flogged for that kind of fucktardism.
It’s $6/day here (Texas also) for a regular jury, but $12/day IIRC for Grand Jury. I’ve been called a few times for regular jury, never been chosen. I did get to sit on a District Court Grand Jury for 6 months, but it only met once a month. That was pretty interesting, got to hear a lot of different felony cases and only had to vote whether or not we thought they should be brought to trial. Very concentrated evidence and no long, drawn out rebuttals from the defense. Just the dirt. And the Assistant DA was super fine, she was very easy to pay attention to.
I got jury duty recently. I’d always looked forward to serving on a jury, but I was absolutely infuriated with Cook County’s jury scheme. Apparently, if you live in the city, you have to serve in the suburbs. And if you live in the suburbs, you have to serve in the city. (This is anecdotal, but seems pretty common. A friend in the burbs tried to get them to let her move her venue from the city, but they told her they intentionally do it this way to decrease your chance of knowing the defendant. There are 5.3 million people in Cook County! Give me a break.) And they will not grant a change of venue unless you’re over 65 years old, iirc. They wouldn’t grant one for me, anyway. I don’t have a car (not very unusual for a city dweller), and while getting around the city is easy enough using pubtrans, getting around the burbs is significantly harder and more time consuming. It would have taken me two hours to get to the courthouse under the best conditions, and of course when I did go, I got stuck in a terrible traffic jam, missed my bus connection, and ended up being an hour and a half late. (I called to tell them what happened, they didn’t seem to care.)
Fortunately, I wasn’t chosen, so the day was a wash. But I was completely infuriated that due to the extreme inconvenience of the location, I would have been forced to beg off jury duty anyway. If they had granted me a change of venue and let me serve in the city, I’d have gone without complaint and served dutifully. They were forcing me to be a bad citizen! Gah!
I made $17.20, though. I’m rich!
The prosecutor has to share evidence with the defence attorney, but there’s no law that says the defence attorney actually has to look at what the prosecutor gives him. Considering some of the stories I’ve heard about public defenders’ incompetence, I don’t have any problem believing that story.
When I was working in Memphis more than ten years ago, so many people were pleading hardship and being excused that they made a Draconian decision: No more exemptions. Everybody gets called to jury duty. Cops, students, single mothers, politicians - you name it.
A judge told me, during a recess, that they had a surgeon on the jury. The surgeon said to him, “You’re paying me $16 a day, and I make $600.”
The judge said to him, “Yes, but for that $16 you get a justice system thrown in, absolutely free.”
I worked with a guy, a supervisor, who was called for jury duty. It was the start of his downfall. He was empaneled, and the judge noticed on the second day that he looked like death warmed over. So he explained that his boss told him he was only on jury duty during day shift, so there was no reason he couldn’t work third shift, too. The judge asked for the boss’s name. The double duty came to an end, but when he got back to work, he was permanently reassigned to vacation relief duty and every other kind of hell they could throw at him. The poor devil knew he was forever cursed, even after his tormentor retired.
The last surgery I had was in '96. My neurosurgeon made $3800/hr back then.
I hereby vow to watch Law and Order much more carefully in the future!
I suspect that at very least professional standards require it. Wouldn’t a lawyer who neglected to do so by liable for malpractice?
At any rate, nope, still not plausible. Something like ninety percent of criminal cases never make it to trial. Our hypothetical lazy public defender is FAR more likely to latch onto something like that and see it as a good reason to persuade his or her client to take a deal. Going to trial in lieu of glancing at a piece of evidence doesn’t seem real likely to me.
Interesting.
In the UK you can claim for ‘loss of earnings’ rather than get a set fee. When i was a witness i just claimed what my employer would normally have paid me and received it. You can also claim for any extra childcare you might need. Obviously both of these are capped amounts but definitely not as low as seems to be the case in the USA.
Cite?
Before you go hog wild and go google crazy looking for internet stories about incompetant public defenders, I will admit that in law as with any human endeavor their are plenty of incompetant people.
But I agree with Exci, the anecdote rings false. Even the most incompetant lawyer would notice the bulge in his file made by a video tape, and even if he didn’t watch it it would not be a suprise that the prosecuction was going to introduce a video tape. Because as I said he would have noticed the bulge that his copy of it created in his file.
Just curious, Miller, where did you here all these “stories”?
Not quite such a one way street at least in California. Here the defense must provide a witness list and any statements made by a witness, to the prosecution 30 days before trial. So no suprise witness for the defense here.
Same thing here in Dallas. But at least here, I can take the train downtown, and that’s $2.50 for a day pass, plus they actually give you a one-day pass for the first (and usually only) day of jury duty. Needless to say, I always take the train.
I agree with that, I made it to the jury box, and the judge interviewed everyone asking about education and interests. I was the only one who had intellectual interests or who mentioned having hobbies, and I was excused. This was a whiplash case and at least one nurse made it onto the jury, which I thought was strange.
Since I’m on salary, I have to turn the jury pay over to my company to get the time off, so I didn’t even get the $17.50 for my efforts (but I was paid for the day, so I guess I shouldn’t complain).
I’ve been voting regularly, like Stuffy, but have only been called for jury duty once. I was active duty at the time, and in the Caribbean. I told the BOE that, and haven’t heard from them since.
I have been summonsed several times, and sat once. The trial lasted 4 days. The first 3 days were without compensation, the fourth paid $50.00. I was on salary at the time, but since the trial was during my two days off that week, my employer let me keep the money. And I had to go in and close the store at least one of my work days (fricking retail!).
I was called to another case around 5 years ago and had to show up for jury selection. There were over 120 people in the jury pool, and the process took 3 days. They couldn’t empanel enough people, so a mistrial was declared, and the venue changed. It was for sexual assault on a child, with a stepfather that had raped his stepdaughter since she was 9 years old (she was 16 when charges were filed, IIRC). There were over 100 counts in the indictment. I am so glad I didn’t have to sit on that jury!
I registered to vote shortly after my 18th birthday. I’m 24 now. I have received 5 jury summons in those 6 years.
I have a nice horror story that will take too long to list here (and I may have whined about it before on the boards; I don’t remember) about the idiocies of the California Jury system and its inability to deal with the concept of a college student who lives in one part of the state while school is in session, and an entirely different part of the state, hundreds of miles away, while school is not in session. A short 20 phone calls, 4 letters, a notarized copy of my jury duty records from my home county, and one threat of arrest from a very evil woman at the LA Country jury office, and I resolved to move the next time a summons came.
Why not register to vote in the county you’re at school in (presumably Santa Barbara)?
I got a jury summons in Sonoma County when I was at school in Santa Cruz County, but since I’d brilliantly reregistered to vote in Santa Cruz, I just called Sonoma and told them I didn’t live there anymore. They said “okay”, problem solved.
I’ve been called for Jury Duty twice–once in NY and once in NJ–and served once (in NY). New York doesn’t pay you at all if your employer pays you for days served, unless you get paid less than the jury fee ($40 per day), and then they pay the difference. I didn’t get paid for my 5 days. It was a buy-and-bust with 4 defendants. 2 guilty. 2 not. One not guilty on insufficient evidence and one guy who was clearly in the wrong place at the wrong time. 1 of the guilty guys flew the coop just before the verdict was read. I wonder if they ever found him?
I got $5 for serving one day in NJ; I got dismissed from a jury at about 4:00 in the afternoon–so close! I have no idea why the ADA tossed me.
I bet he asked you if you had ever served on a jury before and what the verdict in that case was. If you answered yes, and told him two of the defendants were aquitted, then that is why he tossed you.