It was boring. I didn’t bring a book, but there is so much procedural stuff, and waiting, and paper-shuffling, that it is really, really boring.
It was also not exactly inspiring. The case I went through voir dire for was for a child rape/abuse/murder case. There was one woman who had the following exchange:
Prosecutor: You raised your hand when we asked if anyone was a victim of sexual assault, is that accurate? Woman: Yea, I was raped. Prosecutor: I’m sorry to hear that. Do you feel the courts served justice in your case? Woman: No, my dad killed the guy before the cops got to him. Prosecutor: Oh! Well, do you feel like justice was served in your father’s case? Woman: Well, he’s been in jail the past ten years, so no.
I thought there was no way a victim of a similar offense would be empaneled, nor a person with a grudge against the courts, but she was selected.
When I was questioned, I got asked three questions (four if you count the polite “How are you?” from the judge that he asked everyone):
Prosecutor: What do you do for a living? Me: I’m a student. Prosecutor: And where do you go to school? Me: Georgia Tech Prosecutor: And what are you studying? Me: Computer Science with a specialization in Artificial Intelligence Prosecutor: No more questions.
I was not selected. Apparently they don’t want analytical thinkers?
I have no idea what the outcome of the case was, but the jury selection did not inspire me to believe in the system.
For the one I was on and the murder cases I was up for (didn’t get picked) the judge gave a pretty solid estimate of how long it would take. Which was accurate for the minor criminal case I was a juror for. about 6 days, mornings only, so I could go to work in the afternoon.
In the civil case I was on, the plaintiff seemed to not get the jury she wanted, so when we came back the next morning after being empaneled we were told they had settled.
I suspect the reason people get involved with murder cases is that the jury pool is so much larger for them than for minor cases. The Boston Marathon pool is in the thousands.
BTW, it hasn’t come up here but in similar threads someone says that engineers never get picked. Not true around Silicon Valley at least - no one ever brought that up and I got picked twice.
In the ~20 years I’ve been eligible for jury duty, I’ve gotten 15 summons.
OTOH, I know plenty of never-summoned people who’d love the chance to serve.
And it doesn’t help that the state & federal systems don’t talk to each other - I once got out of jury duty because I already had jury duty that day.
Cops used to be automatically exempt but that changed here several years ago. But I doubt I would ever get picked for a criminal trial. A civil trial could be a possibility.
This, with the exception that I’ve never been called. I feel it’s my duty to serve and make the right decision based on careful consideration of the evidence and the court’s instructions. That said, I would HATE every stupid second of it, and would have a very difficult time just sitting in one place, let alone paying close attention to every tiny detail.
I too feel that it’s an eligible citizens duty to serve on a jury when summoned. Of course there may be a reason one couldn’t at the time, illness or something. But if one would expect to get a jury trial, should they ummmm, need one, one should be willing to serve.
On that note I have never served on a jury trial, although I’ve been summoned three times. Once I got as far as the selection questioning, but a jury was seated before they got around to me.
I did serve on a federal grand jury, over a period of 18 months. We went in twelve times. Not as intense as a trial jury, but still really interesting.
I’d love to serve, though not on a long one. I’ve spent enough time in my job on long trials (two to seven weeks) to know how incredibly tedious that can be even for someone who understands how all of the pieces in the case fit together.
That being said, I’ve always wanted the opportunity to see a trial from the “other side,” in that jury box. But I’ve only been called for jury duty twice in my life, and only once was I empaneled. I was bounced because the case was going to almost exclusively involve testimony from law enforcement, and one of the voir dire questions was whether anyone had ever had a poor experience with a cop.
At any rate, I agree with Loach’s summary of the importance of jury service. I really wish people would take it more seriously, and maybe even have a little pride about it.
I lived in NJ for 15 years, voted every year, and never got summons one.
It took a few years for California to catch up to me, but now I am getting them.
The judge at the trial I was on the jury for said that once you have served - or maybe showed up - you get one every single year, since they know you are reliable. So much for randomness. It has been about six years since that trial, and he spoke the truth.
I was on a jury on a drunk driving case. Pretty open-and-shut, really; we couldn’t figure why it was allowed to have gone to trial. All of us said we’d have plea-bargained.
We really did “deliberate.” We argued it back and forth, trying every way we could to see if there were any doubt at all. We took turns being devil’s advocate. But in the end, we couldn’t see any alternative: unanimous guilty verdict.
I would very happily submit my fate to a jury if it were anything like the one I served on.
You’re contradicting yourself. As judge of the facts, it would be my clear duty to find “not guilty” in any such case, based on my judgment of fact that witchcraft simply does not exist. It would be as if there were laws against holding your breath for an hour, walking through solid walls without putting holes in them, etc, and someone were accused of committing those acts.
This has nothing to do with the ability or propriety of a juror judging the morality of the law; it rests solely upon the juror’s role as arbiter of the facts, beginning with the fundamental fact of whether or not the alleged crime occurred in the first place.
Here in NYC they told me that after having served once, I would not get called again for at least eight years. I guess it helps that the population is quite dense here.
The rule here is that you don’t have to serve for at least a year after you have served and “served” means anywhere from called in for a week and never had to show to actually being on a jury. That’s the law for Federal jury duty too and thank goodness for that because it meant that I didn’t have to drive over 100 miles for a Federal summons that happened to come a few months after my county service.