50 here. Never been summoned. Is it based on voter registration?
Usually voter registration and car registration.
I did the voir dire thingy a few years ago. It was a child molestation case. One of the scheduled witnesses was a registered nurse. One of the prospective jurors was a nurse. She was not excluded, but the judge cautioned her to NOT make use of her own expertise in the jury room.
So if a fellow juror choked on lunch she’d have to sit on her hands and not Heimlich them?
During voir dire for my recent case one of the prospective jurors turned out to be the head of a lab that does DNA testing. Since evidence in this case involved DNA testing he was asked if he could rely on the evidence as presented in court, even if his opinions might differ from the expert witnesses. He didn’t think that he’d be able to do so and so he was excused.
I understand this and I don’t have a problem with it - it’s not fair to either side to present technical details, have expert witnesses whose credentials can be checked by both sides and presented to the court & the jurors and then have the jury potentially swayed by the opinions of someone whose credentials and expertise are unknown. That doesn’t mean that this potential juror in our case would be wrong or incompetent but simply that we have no way of knowing, and neither does the court. It’d be similar to allowing an “expert witness” to testify on a subject with no vetting of his credentials; all of the technical experts that we heard from were introduced, their credentials and experience were discussed, both sides had the opportunity to question them and so forth before the witness was allowed to present any evidence.
When we lived in Baltimore, Maryland, I was summoned several times for jury duty. Even on the days where I wasn’t selected to be on a trial, waiting around wasn’t that bad. Two movies were shown, one in the morning, the other in the afternoon. There was also a quiet room for people to sit in if they didn’t want to watch the movies. I also got paid; the places where I worked for those few years had policies in place that employees were paid while on jury duty.
I was selected for a jury twice. The first time, I was an alternate on a murder trial. Two guys got into an argument over $10, so one went into his house, came back out with a gun, and shot the other guy in the eye and killed him. The trial was especially interesting because there was an official translator - he was needed to translate Ebonics into English that everyone in the jury would be able to understand. That’s where I learned what a “hoopty” was. (For the record, it’s a beat-up old car.)
The second time, I was foreman on a civil trial. The trial lasted a week and a day, and I was hoping it would go longer. The judge had retired, and the city brought him back part-time to help clear the court docket. He was big on social activities, so our lunch break every day was a 2 or 3 hour affair. I had plenty of time to peruse the nearby used book stores and stroll along the inner harbor.
Before I worked for the courts, I worked for a public defenders’ office. None of those folks lost any sleep over convictions of horrible, heinous defendants, provided those defendants were convicted lawfully.
I consider defense attorneys to be the vanguards against prosecutorial overreach. There’s a reason for that old saying, “It takes a good prosecutor to convict a guilty man. It takes a great prosecutor to convict an innocent one.”
I have seen confessions coerced out of deaf defendants who had no deaf interpreter. Eye witness testimony that was as wrong as it could be. Questionable rulings on the admissibility of exculpatory evidence. Defense attorneys are the ones who call bullshit on that kind of stuff and ensure that our rights are respected and enforced. They insist that convictions are obtained within the rules of our judicial system. Without them, we’d have a fully unfettered police state.
How does one apply for that job? “Excuse me? I speak jive.”
I was called when I lived in DC. It was for a case involving a stabbing not too far from where I lived. I had read about the crime so I was excused.
I live in Virginia and and am exempt under the Virginia Code so I probably won’t serve until I either retire or switch careers.
Looks like I’ll be going. And it looks like it’s going to be 16 degrees tomorrow, and we’re getting 1-3 inches of snow tonight. Yay.
(Seriously, I don’t think I’d mind nearly as much if the weather weren’t so bad)
My easiest exemption came from the county court in Somerset County NJ. I had moved to my new house (a couple of residences ago) in Hunterdon County over a year before. The notice was not forwarded from my old address. It was addressed to my residence in the new county. I sent it back with a note saying they might want to check what towns are in their county. I never heard another word about it.
That’s nothing – according to my cousin, my uncle was called twice: after he died.
Agree. I actually just got done serving on a jury last week. We were told it would be a two-day trial, but it ended up dragging out for a week. My job is very flexible and I had no problem making arrangements (I ended up only missing one day of work), but a lot of my fellow jurors were scrambling trying to work things out as far as jobs and child care was concerned. I may have run into some problems myself getting someone to cover for me had it gone on for another day or two.
I’ve gone to jury duty six times and have been selected as a juror twice. I’ve also been summoned three other times but didn’t need to report. Once I was excused because I had settlement on a house the next day, another time a trial’s witnesses included firefighters and my dad was an active firefighter at the time (though not a witness in this case), and I was also excused once because I knew who one of the defendants was.
I’d be lying if I said I was gung-ho over having to report for jury duty, but I’ve been through it enough times where it’s no big deal to me. Yes, it’s boring and the waiting times can seemingly be endless, but you’re typically out of there at a decent time when all is said and done.
While I agree that the justice system should disallow that sort of thing, that’s different than saying that each juror should act that way.
I think we all have a moral duty not to take part in punishing an innocent person that exceeds our duty to abide by the rule of law. If I’m on a jury and I know for whatever reason that the accused is not guilty, I cannot in good conscience go along with it just because the rules of the court say I can only consider what was presented in the courtroom.
Hopefully, the attorneys will be competent and the experts will be honest and well-informed. But if the rubber meets the road, I know which way I’m voting.
I’ve never served on jury, but I think it would be interesting.