Jury Duty!
 

Before today, I had made it to the point of being questioned by the attorneys, but had gotten struck for one reason or another. Today, however, I was chosen for an armed robbery case.

The trial starts tomorrow morning.

Dynasty!

Dynasty indeed.

I was sitting there in the jury box thinking that very thing. (The DeKalb County courthouse is located very near to Eddie's Attic, which has a free wireless network which extends into the courthouse.) I thought about taking my IPAQ, and writing notes/posting a dynasty as it went along. However, His Honor gave us instructions not to discuss the case with anyone, and I'd imagine posting about it here would violate that order.

I think your vow of silence ends as the trial does, so those notes might be helpful in posting your dynasty like summary!!!

Yes, he did say that it could end when the trial does. Excellent point.

Yep, Don't post it during the trial itself but afterwards I can't imagine it being a issue.

if they are convicted, are you going to recommend time in the penalty box as punishment?

dola,
when you found out you had jury duty, did you call the court to find out if you needed to bring sleeping bag?

Are jury deliberations private after the fact? That's the part I personally think will be most interesting. I'm operating under the assumption that since the case has actually gone to trial, then the D.A.'s office thinks they have enough evidence to convict, but the defense thinks they can walk--which means that it probably won't be 12-0 either way immediately.

Dadgum right!

You are the wind beneath my wings, Draft Dodger. :p

My wife drew a 14 day Jury penalty that starts the 11th and runs through the 25th. And to make matters even better, we are moving out of state on the 30th. They better let her out of this stuff. If she cant get preempted before hand, its gonna suck.

luckily "The Wind Beneath SkyDog's Wings" is too long to use as a title here.
:p

Not necessarily. They are only as private as the jurors want to keep them. In fact, the attorneys often like to talk to the jurors after the trial to get an understanding of why they voted the way they did.

SkyDog is really Nick Easter from "Runaway Jury".

my eyes. they burn.

ust a note.. in C.illinois, you're not allowed to take anything in the courtroom during the trial except for the court provided notebook... and they destroy said notebooks after the trial.

He could always just claim he had a really great memory.

You are my sun, my moon, my starlit sky...

What's 10 year's in jail. I'm sure they'd love your burning anus and Man Thong stories....

A few years back, I was on a murder trial jury in Cook County. Gang- and drug-related. Anyhow, the guy was clearly guilty. His own statement placed him at the scene knowing that the guy was gonna get wacked. His main defense was that the gun was never found and that we couldn't be sure he pulled the trigger (there were 2 other guys involved in the incident, all with conflicting stories of who actually pulled the trigger). Anyhow, when he gave his story to the police, he apparently didn't know that being at the scene with advanced knowledge of whats going to happen gets you convicted even if you didn't pull the trigger.

We started our deliberations and took a quick vote to see where we stood. Most thought guilty, but there were 2 or 3 who were saying not guilty. One of them (all of the dissenters were women) said he couldn't be guilty because he "looked too nice". At least one said they would never vote guilty, which meant things were looking bad, because there was no way I was going to be swayed to say he was not guilty. I'm pretty sure some others felt the same. So it looked like we were going to be stalemated and stuck in deliberations for a long time.

Anyhow, things drag on for another day, with us getting nowhere. Finally, after a lot of haggling, we convinced one or two of them. What I think convinced the last person to vote guilty was the fact that she wanted to go home, so she just went ahead and changed her vote without really seeming to be convinced. Needless to say, the whole experience did not leave me feeling too confident in our system.

After the trial, the judge told us the guy had previously been convicted of arson and some other nasty things, and that we got the right verdict. It just bothered me that the doubters seemed to have changed their mind because the deliberations were too inconvenient for them.

Here in California, the jurors are allowed to keep their notes. I still have mine from my month long stint last year. Also you are free to talk about everything once the trial is over. The judge will release you from service. Good Luck, and don't watch that new Fox series for tips, I think they do just about nothing by the book:) .

I recieved a summons for jury duty last week and I have to report to the courthouse on Monday the 14th. I received jury duty summons' twice before, but both times I had already moved and couldn't serve. I'm interested to see the process in action, but I really don't want to get selected. I really can't afford to miss much work...

I've only received a summons for jury once, and I had a viable excuse to get out of it. I had just moved from a city in East Texas to one in West Texas, and received the summons a month or two after I had moved. So I got to check the box that said 'No longer a resident of this county' or something along those lines.

As an attorney, I've always wanted to be on a jury just to experience things from a different perspective. Not that I've had many jury trials, as that's not really the type of law I practice, but I still think it would be a good learning experience. However, I've never been called. My wife, on the other hand, continues to get a summons every 6 months from South Florida, where she last lived in 1997. We can't quite figure that one out.

Every time I've been called, and there has been an attorney in the jury pool, he or she has been the first one kicked off the jury.

That seems to be the common theme in every jury trial I've ever heard people talk about. "Ok, go ahead and give the guy the chair because I want to go home."

Anybody have a better idea than trial by jury, because I don't think that system works very well anymore.

Maybe we could go back to "Sink or swim" trial by drowning?

Well, if she weighs more than a duck...

Yes. I think you should have to run an obstacle course to prove your innocence. They could have it set up so that for a capital offense you have to make it through in 2 minute 40 seconds. For a felony, 3 minutes 10 seconds. For a misdemeaner, 3 minutes, 30 seconds.

I really think it's the only fair way to do it.

I actually think the inconvienance factor is the system working correctly. After all how much conviction can they really have if they're willing to mess up someones life just so they can go home? I've been in several situations where consensus was required and people dug their heels in. Everyone knows that a single person can prevent things from happening and everyone knows mistrials happen. These stories do nothing to decrease my faith in the system.

I did jury duty once, got picked for your typical fender-bender neck-injury case, served for 2.5 days, and had a great time. The jury system came through, as we deliberated for all of 45 minutes, and spent most of it figuring out how little the plaintiff would get (ended up quite a bit less than the defendent/insurance company were willing to settle for).

Every now and then, though, one of us makes it through. One of the guys in our office had that happen. He thought for sure he would get kicked off, but they kept him.

It sounds like their reasons for wanting to come out not guilty were pretty poor, though. It maybe just took them a couple of days to realize that they were wrong.

You know, you would think if they could get through said obstacle course in that amount of time, they wouldn't have had their asses ran down and caught by the police :D

Try the European model. The judge is the one who hunts down all the facts and uses it all to make a finding.

I'm just glad he didn't use that picture with the speedo :)

And as far as the case information.. I wouldn't use people's names even after the fact.. could leave you open to being sued.. which in this day and age, is all too common for all too trivial/nonsense reasons..

Of course the down side is putting too much power into the hands of the government (which is why the jury system was put into place in the first place) but I do wonder if a single judge or even a panel of three would not be fairer. Someone who regularly sees the courtroom would not be as susceptible to the "showmanship" part of trials today, and maybe the court could get back to finding truth instead of "win at all cost."



Don't know, just talking.

man, I didn't get much for that effort. You guys suck today

GD: That's the balance you will have to decide on. What is more important? Having the people of the community decide guilt rather than the governing body? Or getting at 'the truth' (if there is an absolute truth... but that's a topic for another thread ;)) rather than lawyers spinning their story to those not trained in such things.

My love just isn't enough for you anymore, is it?

you, and making fun of people, is really all this place has left for me.

I have been on two juries. One was two days of testimony, and 45 minutes of deliberation. The other was three weeks of trial, and gruelling week of deliberations. I was elected foreman, and had the additional duty to maintain some semblance of "order" in the process. On the third day of deliberations one of the jurors basically told me she had been doing her own research on the case. I had to report her to the judge. She was dismissed, actually escorted out by deputies, and we had to start deliberations over from scratch with an alternate. Also there were a number charges we had to decide on, and we were actually hung on what we thought was the BIG one. So we had a mistrial as well.

The deliberations were amazingly stressful for me. I deal with tight deadlines at work all the time, and consider myself steady under pressure. I think it was because I was faced with 8 hour days filled completely with confrontation. I think it is wrong to intentionally avoid jury duty, but I might actually consider it, if I am ever again called on a lengthy case.

I've been called once and selected to a jury - we got through electing a foreman, at which point the bailiff came in and said that it had already been declared a mistrial (something about discovery), and we could all go home.

Maybe, but it didn't seem like they had actually been convinced at all. It felt much more like they knew the people who were saying he was guilty were not going to back down, and the not guilty women were afraid of having to continue deliberations for days.

Yeah, well, I got noplace else to go...

Ohh. I'm up for jury duty this week too. If I get selected we can have two dynasties.