Jury Duty

[Bird brain]

well, I just had jury duty last week. There were 30 of us showed up and only 20 needed. I got sent home and that does it for 3 years.
Donated my $6 to a local place to help folks.

 

[cforst513]

i was a witness in a case once. my friend got in a fight w/ a husky girl (she started it. mentally unstable at best. she also was an expert at tae kwan do) and she pressed charges for assault. at the trial my friend's defense lawyer DESTROYED said crazy girl. i was the only defense witness other than my friend, and i got paid $6. nice, considering i spent the ENTIRE day in a crappy courthouse, missing ALL my classes.

 

[Lear Lackey]

Oh yeah, you are innocent until proven guilty.

Except when you are a pilot going through a TSA security checkpoint.

 

[DJS]

I got called to jury duty once and will never go again. I'll find some way out of it in the future (I watched as most people simply claimed they were sole propreitors of a business and would suffer irreparable harm, etc. and were let go).

I sat for 2 days in the jury room, mostly working on my computer. Finally, I was juror 9 for an assault trial. As best as I could tell from the questions the prosecutor and defense attorneys asked, a drug deal went bad, two guys got in a fight, at least one of them had a knife and stabbed the other. The prosecution was making it out to be a simple, "he stabbed the other guy" case. The defense was making it out to be a simple, "they fought and my client had the misfortune to win the fight". I was looking forward to seeing what the actual evidence and law had to say on the subject as this didn't seem completely slam dunk from a common sense perspective.

During voir dire, both the prosecution and the defense dismissed every person in the jury and the backup pool (another 32 people) who had more than a high school diploma. A group of about 6 of us grabbed coffee afterwards and marvelled at it. They (both defense and prosecution!) dismissed people as soon as they found out they were teachers, doctors, engineers, etc. And the judge never questioned any of their dismissals.

I decided then and there I was never going to serve on another jury. What a waste of time.

 

[Flechas]

Well, I went there this morning, sat in a big room with about 1500 people. Over half of the people were called ot see if they were going to be used, then we waited for a long time, saw the new Pope, and after 4 long hours the rest of us were told to go, they didn't need an more people. What a waste of a day...