# Stories About Jury Selection/Jury Service/Jury Experiences **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [April 2, 2023, 3:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stories-about-jury-selection-jury-service-jury-experiences/982013 "2023-04-02T03:25:19Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 63
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2023, 5:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stories-about-jury-selection-jury-service-jury-experiences/982013/63 "2023-04-02T17:27:00Z")
This was in another thread, but I’ll take it up here to avoid a further hijack: > [@Manhattan Prosecutors file criminal charges for Trump re Stormy Daniels case - ongoing discussion here](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nyt-prosecutors-signal-criminal-charges-for-trump-are-likely-re-stormy-daniels-case-march-9-2023/980953/638): > > I was recently in the voire dire pool for a first degree murder case. They did not choose me. I think they did not want a thought leader in the room. Not that I was pre-disposed either way. But I figure they figured I’d carry a few folks with me whichever way I went. And they did not want a wild card with that much clout in their deck. Made me happy to be dismissed. Surprised a bit, but happy. I find it just amazing that being thoughtful and analytical is cause for dismissal from a jury! No wonder OJ got acquitted! Then there’s this, which is about how in Canada lawyers – or anyone who’s even been to law school – is automatically disqualified from jury duty: > [@Manhattan Prosecutors file criminal charges for Trump re Stormy Daniels case - ongoing discussion here](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nyt-prosecutors-signal-criminal-charges-for-trump-are-likely-re-stormy-daniels-case-march-9-2023/980953/656): > > There’s that, but there is also the situation where lawyers know the law, while ordinary people don’t. But ordinary people can decide facts without trying to apply law to them. All a jury does is decide the facts, and nothing else. Then the judge interprets the facts in accordance with the law. The problem with having lawyers in the jury is that a lawyer on the jury will often try to apply the law to the facts before the judge gets the chance to do so. Thus your “kind of authorative” comme… I have heard or read about instances in both American and Canadian courts where the judge instructs the jury on points of law, such as why certain facts are relevant and others are not and why they should not be considered in rendering a verdict. Where there is an option to select a trial by judge or by jury, a defendant and his lawyer will often opt for a judge-only trial where general public perceptions and biases would tend to run against the defendant. In the sexual assault trial of radio host Jian Ghomeshi in Toronto, for example, the decision to be tried by judge alone was a wise one from his standpoint. The judge, ruling strictly on points of law and the credibility of witnesses, declared Ghomeshi not guilty. Ghomeshi by then had become such a reviled figure that protests broke out over the verdict. But the legal community widely praised the correctness of the judge’s ruling. There is little doubt in my mind how a jury would have decided the case, no matter what instructions the judge gave them. --- _[View the full topic](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stories-about-jury-selection-jury-service-jury-experiences/982013)._