Well, that makes it a little more fun, at least!
Hope you’re done with the ordeal soon. Most likely, the cases you were summoned for will settle. (And I probably jinxed it!)
I will be on vacation on the 19th and 20th. If it’s a long enough trial I may get deferred for 30 days. They said that 99.9% of people asking for deferral will get called again in 30, 60 or 90 days.
Good luck! (Whatever that means to you.)
You may have posted about this earlier in the thread, I forget – as you may remember, we share a courthouse, and presumably you didn’t get called up last year for the Big Case they were calling a bunch of people for? My neighbors got called up, my boss got called up, I got called up, but as I remember my husband didn’t. There were maybe 100 of us in the room, they asked how many people would NOT suffer hardship from being on a case that was – I forget how long, but I think months-long – and maybe 10-15 people in the room raised their hands. (Not me.) They had those ten people go to another room and let the rest of us go. And apparently they had been trying to get a jury for literally months.
If I have time later I’ll share my one experience of serving on a jury (at this same courthouse, eight years ago). I was able to delay going in because of breastfeeding – for all of three months. I mean, I could have kept requesting delays for a while, but I gambled that I wouldn’t get called to a jury and lost, so I got to pump in the bathroom during breaks, which was great fun (not).
IIRC we brought it up in deliberations. The prosecution didn’t address it, which I thought was weird. However it was very young attorney – he looked like he was about 13 and sounded like Bart Simpson – prosecuting the case so maybe he was just green.
That’s lousy! The court treated my jury like royalty (when they weren’t treating us like hostages) - the bailiffs made sure we all got lunch, even before deliberations, and they brought the one pregnant juror an extra cushion. It was district court rather than metropolitan, which I’m sure made a difference, but I’d still expect a chair!
Hey! I’m afraid that I have no idea what that Big Case might be but this is the first time I have been called in several years.
I got a 30 day deferral because the case is going to last until April 27th and I have a vacation that will take me out of town on the 19th-23rd. My friend in the pool is somehow acquainted with the defendant and the judge wanted to talk to her more about that in private.
The defendant was accused of multiple counts of shoplifting. At a Ralph’s in December, a different place a couple of weeks later, a CVS a couple of weeks after that and witness intimidation and finally at an Apple Store in late January. Everything was a misdemeanor except for the Apple Store theft.
Reported in on Wednesday, turned out I was at the bottom of the list; 45 of us called in for selection, and I was number 44. Only 3 people were excused; one older gentleman with very obvious health issues who had just come off of a 5-week stint with pneumonia, apparently; he was being put on medication and alerted the court that he would likely fall asleep in the jury box. He was excused. Two more felt they couldn’t be impartial once it was made clear it was a child abuse case. One woman asked a lot of questions, as she was also dealing with some health issues, but she decided that she wouldn’t have any problems sitting on the jury. We all spent an awful lot of time standing around in a hallway, and then I was sent home after about 6.5 hours in the courthouse (we did get a 1.5 hour lunch recess, but I didn’t really see any point in leaving; I ate a bag of jerky and a Twix from the courthouse vending machine…)
I was impressed by the explanation of the process; I was also impressed by the white noise “sidebar system”, allowing communication between individual jurors with privacy concerns and the court; it was surprisingly effective.
I liked the prosecutor’s approach; he made it very clear that we, as potential jurors, were not sitting in judgement of the defendant. We were in fact sitting in judgement of HIM; did he, representing the state, meet the requirement of laying out his case for the charge, beyond a reasonable doubt?
My employer paid me a full eight hours for the day, and would have the entire time I was serving, if it came to that. I’m theoretically still on the list for duty this period (I believe until August), so I may be called on again. We use a computerized system, so I’ll just get a text message in advance if I need to report.
I served on one jury. It was a very interesting experience, one that I’d do again.
It was a weird drug case. The defense didn’t really dispute the facts, only the charge. The defendant insisted the softball-sized bag of cocaine was all for himself, what I called “the Costco defense.” That might have worked if he didn’t also have filled dime bags on him.
Not long after that, I got called in again and got a few seats away from ending up on another jury - one I really wanted to be on. During voir dire, prospective jurors learned the defendant was acting as his own lawyer, and the only charge was resisting arrest. We also learned, from his questions and general behavior, why he was probably arrested in the first place. He was an egotistical ball of oppositional defiance disorder, and I would have loved to watch the courtroom fireworks. C’est la vie.
I was called for jury duty several times, but only made the final cut twice.
The first time, I was an alternate on a murder trial. Two men were arguing over $10; one went into his house, brought out a pistol, and shot the other man in the eye, killing him. This trial still stands out in my mind for two reasons:
- I learned the definition of “hooptie,” and
- The court used the services of a translator during the testimony; some of what was said was in Ebonics, and I guess the court wanted to ensure that everyone on the jury understood what was being said.
Unfortunately, because I was an alternate, I wasn’t able to sit in during the deliberations. I would have found the guy guilty.
The second time, I was the foreperson on a civil trial. There were 12 jurors and alternates, and one of the jurors had to be dismissed during the trial because he was becoming a pain in the ass. I don’t remember the details, but a young couple was suing a mortgage company for false advertising - something about the interest rate that was charged was more than what was advertised…
This trial I remember mostly because of the judge. He had actually retired, but the city brought him back to hear cases so the docket wouldn’t get clogged up. He had a full social schedule, which meant we had lunches 2 and 2 1/2 hours long. Also, the clocks had changed in the middle of the trial (in the fall), so he announced that we’d be finishing every day by 3:30 PM so nobody would have to leave in the dark.
The case took just over a week. We found for the plaintiffs, but didn’t give them the amount they were seeking.
So was the defendant indeed found guilty?
Care to elaborate on this? I’m curious as to what this guy was doing during the proceedings.
I don’t know if he was found guilty. I was an alternate juror, so I was dismissed before deliberations. I tried to keep an eye on the newspaper to see if there was anything about it, but I gave up after a while.
As far as what the guy was doing that he was thrown off the jury, I don’t remember specifically. I do know that he insisted on discussing the case while we were in the jury room, which is a big no-no until the judge hands the case to the jury. I seem to think he was also insisting on sending frivolous notes to the judge, and I think the judge was the one who had the bailiff take him out.
A shot to the back of the head and a clean death, eh? Or was it something more dreadful, so as to keep the rest of you in line?
Nothing dreadful, as I recall. Just a “please come with me.”
Our court staff make sure the alternates hear the eventual verdict. Under our system, they have to call when the verdict comes in and release the alternates, as they theoretically could be called back during deliberations. So, that’s probably a very easy time to tell them what happened.
Same where I used to work. It was one of my after-trial tasks.
Fifteen years ago, our alternates got to leave and were on call in case we had to start over. I think at least one of them got a phone number from one of the regular jurists to fill them in.
I just finished jury duty on Friday. A man was accused of beating his wife on Thanksgiving. There were 5 charges - 3 variations on Assault & Battery, Strangulation, and Attempted Murder. We found him guilty of all 3 counts of A&B, but not guilty of the other two. We agreed it was plausible that he did the last 2, but not beyond a reasonable doubt.
The defendant did take the stand in his own defense. It certainly didn’t help him - he admitted that a previous witness who had testified had been at the scene, even though no one else saw her. She was a close friend of the victim, and clearly hated the defendant, so there may have been some doubt that her testimony was fabricated. But when he placed her at the scene it really removed all doubt.
This also of course opened him up to cross examination by the prosecutor. She went after him like Jack McCoy on Law & Order. Totally ripped every inconsistency in his testimony, from minor to damning.
We asked the judge about his decision to testify when she talked to us after the verdict. She said normally defendants don’t, and sometimes defense attorneys actually ask the judge to talk to the defendant out of it. But in this case the defendant was “chomping at the bit” to tell his side of the story. I really wonder if we would have convicted him of all 3 A&B charges without his own testimony.
At my last trial, the defendant did not testify and we did vote to convict because it did pass our “reasonable doubt” standard. Without him getting up to say “that cop was lying” or any witness or evidence to say it, it felt like there was no other choice. We actually said during deliberations that if he had spoken just a little we might have voted to acquit because we had no alternate theory to reasonably entertain.
I did like how in both our trials the judges did come and speak with us after and I got the sense from both judges I served under that we did reach the right conclusion because there were things that were not admissible to us that they knew.
At the age of 48, I received my first jury summons last month. In Georgia, at least in my county, jury duty runs Friday to Friday. Jury selection is supposed to be finished on the first day, but routinely continues into the second day. That’s what happened with me.
I endured the most agonizingly boring day of my entire life last Friday. I sat in a room of strangers for almost nine hours for nothing. I returned this Monday and finally got called in with a group to speak to the judge/attorneys. Upon entering the courtroom, I realized that the judge is my cousin’s husband and the prosecutor is someone I’ve known my entire life. I was immediately disqualified and get to do it all over again in August!
I was assigned to return for the same process on 8/25. Living in the same county your entire life has a few downsides!
The first time that I had jury duty, I had to actually physically go downtown as opposed to simply checking in by phone. All of us potential jurors sat in a big room where, every now and then, they’d pull a few of us out for a trial. I was only pulled out of the room once all week and didn’t even have to serve. I remember it mostly because one of the other potential jurors was a law professor that BOTH attorneys knew. He was struck so fast it broke the sound barrier. I read The Hot Zone during my copious amounts of free time, so I suppose that it wasn’t a complete waste.