I was called three times, served twice. The time I wasn’t chosen, it was a case where a man had brokwn into a home and raped a mother while her young daughter was there. I was one of the first group of potential jurors, and was quickly released, as a woman near the same age as the victim. I always wondered who they ended up getting to serve - old men on the sex offender registry?
I served on a jury just once (other times were civil cases and the defendants settled). We filled out a form listing various interests, including favorite TV show. I wrote Doctor Who.
Turns out the DA was also a fan and asked me my favorite Doctor (David Tennant). I figured that was it: we clearly shared an interest (he said Martha Jones was his favorite companion) and the defense would fear I wouldn’t be impartial toward him.
I was put on the jury, anyway.
The trial ended in a plea bargain. We were able to talk to the lawyers afterward (we had spent several days listening to testimony). I asked why they chose me.
They said that since I was into science fiction, I’d be more likely to buy into the defense narrative of the events.
( The defendants were clearly guilty, and also quite stupid. They confessed to the crime while making a call on a jailhouse phone – the ones with big signs saying that all calls were monitored.)
I was empaneled for a civil trial years ago. The guy next to me in the jury box was a senior partner in a K Street law firm as well as a law professor. We got on well during the various long breaks in the trial.
Over a delightful lunch at one of José Andrés’ restaurants near the court, we were describing our respective professions. At some point I (a PhD materials scientist) said, “my profession and yours pursue the truth in very different ways”, to which he agreed. “Yours is wrong”, to which he also agreed.
When I read this, I had an instant bristling response: “I don’t understand the question, it seems to be rooted in a fundamental misunderstanding of how computer memory works, can you explain more about what you mean and why you’re asking?”
I don’t know what that would do to my selectability.
The one time I got to the point of being in a pool of people being questioned directly, I remember thinking both attorneys (prosecutor and defense, a criminal matter) were unimpressive. The prosecutor was a droning functionary, and defense counsel was a blithering moron in a cheap baggy suit. I tried really hard to hide my lack of respect, and I don’t think I said anything particularly critical or obnoxious, but I must have given off “smart guy who’s going to be a problem” vibes and got excused.
Me too (as a totally non-STEM person). My first reaction would have been to say “We haven’t heard the evidence yet, so how can either of us characterise it at all?”
I’ve had to appear twice. Once was 42 years back; I was the office curiosity, as most of us were in our early 20s, and had never been called. I got as far as getting into the courtroom, but they selected the needed number before they got to me.
The second time, they called a bunch of names, and said the rest of us could go home. I’d actually gotten the notice a couple months before, and requested a deferral because it was in the middle of a long-planned trip; IIRC, I was able to select the actual date I’d need to appear.
Got called up one other time, but when I phoned the number the night before, was told I did not need to show up.
As far as the OP’s tale, I’d like to think that such an answer would make the lawyer WANT you, unless their planned presentation would be to appeal to emotions / knee-jerk reactions, rather than someone who would look at and evaluate the evidence.
I would say potentially none of them are binary. The answer to self-defense could be “yes”, but also “yes” to use of excessive force, thus the accused should be found guilty of whatever he did but with mitigating circumstances, etc. for all of them.
- Was it self-defence? Yes/
No - Did the defendant use excessive force while defending himself? Yes/No
- Did the defendant know, or should he have known, that he was using excessive force? Yes/No
And so on. Each question is binary. It could be self-defence, but the defendant used excessive force. If he used excessive force, was it intentional? If it was not intentional, then did he commit a crime? …
I’ve only served on one jury - a civil trip-and-fall case. I assumed I would be dismissed, as I was working as a Field Engineer for a large construction/engineering firm. I just assumed one or the other attorney would see me as a problem for them, but it was not to be.
Turned out to be a dreadfully easy case to decide (for the defendant). I’m pretty sure we spent more time reading the jury instructions, selecting a foreperson, and filling out the form than we did actually debating our decision.
In English trial procedure it’s now extremely unusual for any voir dire to take place and juror challenges had better be for articulable cause such as prior acquaintance with the parties or lawyers in the case.
Evidence may be true but misleading.
The truth of some evidence may be very difficult to judge (eg the witness is sure they saw the defendent running from the scene. But no matter how sure they are, they might be wrong – or they might be correct. There are some ways to check this, but they’re not perfect.)
No, they’re not. If the defendent’s life wasn’t being threatened by the murder victim at the exact moment of the murder, but had been repeatedly threatened before including ‘if you ever call the cops on me again sooner or later I’m going to kill you’ – was that self-defense?
The jury will have to decide whether it was legally punishable murder, yes. But even that may not be a binary decision – they may have a choice of different degrees of murder and/or of manslaughter, as well as of not guilty.
– when I get a jury summons in main farming season, I’ve so far been successful at saying that I’m the sole workforce and can’t serve except between November and March. I’ve been called a couple of times during that timespan but they’ve always filled the jury before they got to me, though it’s come pretty close.
Sure, but I was addressing the actual point that @Whack-a-Mole was making rather than focusing on the narrow aspect of one specific question – that in the real world, the examples listed are often blurred by messy reality and not always readily subject to bright-line determination. Another example in the self-defense case would be if the accused was defending himself against an attack with a weapon, but it was the accused who had barged into the other party’s home and physically confronted them. Is self-defense a legitimate argument there, and even if so, what weight should be given to the extenuating circumstances?
I’ve been to jury duty a number of times, but only got asked questions to be a juror once. The lawyer was asking about education level. A guy with a master’s degree was immediately dismissed. When I said that I have a PhD, I was immediately dismissed. I guess they didn’t want highly educated people.
I did have to serve on a grand jury, which was not fun. There is pretty much no way to get out of it. I had to go in one day a week for 12 weeks. The only lucky part was that the cases were mostly assault, battery, robbery, and that type. There was another grand jury for the higher crimes, like murder and rape which would not have been any fun.
In the UK the prosecution can not bump people off the jury. The only ways you can you can be deselected for jury service are:
-
You apply for exemption because of difficulties you would have to attend (e.g. you have booked a holiday abroad at that time) and your application is accepted by the court staff
-
You inform the court you are unable to follow evidence you can make a similar application for exemption
-
On attending the court you will be given the names of the defendent and people with significant importance in the case and whether you know them. If you do, you explain how you know them and a decision is made whether you should be excluded.
I was a juror in a child-molestation trial last summer. There were 100 in the room, and I was #28. Having been through this before, I assured my wife the probability of selection was so low we could plan our trip the following week. To my surprise, I was selected, and the number of the final juror selected was 68. So I got my first look at a criminal trial for the next week or so. We (jury) also got to choose the sentence, so it was an interesting and disturbing experience.
Question for the legal experts: How many people are lawyers allowed to strike in voir dire? Are some people considered extremely ineligible and removed by the judge or some other rule (that doesn’t count against each lawyer’s total)? I never understood how we got to the 68th juror without each lawyer having 27 available “strikes”. Did the judge himself disqualify the guys who claimed they didn’t care about legal niceties and wanted the defendant shot dead? (several said this during the interview process).
A big goal of any defense attorney is to create “reasonable doubt”, and he may have felt that it is easier to do with people who see the world as grayscale and not simply as black and white. If that was the case, he might have asked for exclusion.
Try a Federal Grand Jury for 18 months. Investigating price fixing in the animal feed industry. I’m in St. Louis so “Checkerboard Square” was involved. The end result? Feds dropped it.
My God, what a waste of your time and of taxpayer money. 
I was on a state Grand Jury for 18 months, although we only met Wednesday afternoons. It was an investigation into allegations of police misconduct in the 30th precinct. I got to hear an awful lot of stories about police doing horrible things. It was horrible, even though we indicted a lot of dirty cops who were ultimately found guilty. I suspect this will make me ineligible for any trial involving police testimony for the rest of my life.
I’ve been called for jury duty several times, but the only time i made it as far as being asked questions, the trial dates interfered with my passover preparations and the judge excused me. He said, “are you saying [precise legal phrase here about exercising my freedom of religion]”, and i replied that yes, that was the case.
The questions are binary, but deciding the answers to those questions involves non-binary analysis, such as credibility of multiple witnesses, and the legal instructions from the judge, which can be a complex decision tree, and the application of those legal instructions to the facts.