doing my civic duty...

[katster]

I am off to take over the world by serving my time in jury duty.

It should be fantabulous.

Or something.

See you all when I'm done.

Comments

[explorer-alpha.livejournal.com]

I always wondered how many different things I could say or do to get myself excused from Jury Duty, you know, like "an eye for an eye", or "the facts be damed".

[lirazel.livejournal.com]

I'm a pervert.

See, I kind of liked jury duty when I did it. Got to talk to some interesting people, got to see the silly, silly things people do to get out of it (and fail), and got to peep in at three fairly interesting cases. All civil cases. Two of the three cases settled because their strategy had not included actually going to trial, just making things hell for the other side. So our being there at all saved the county a huge sum, because if they hadn't been able to empanel a jury the whole charade would have gone on and on.

And the coolest thing? One of the jury pool was a young woman with developmental delays, as we say these days. She had gotten up at 4 AM to take a complex series of busses and trains and more busses to the county courthouse because she is a citizen and wanted to do her duty. She was called, and challenged, and the judge gravely dismissed her, thanking her for coming and also for her excellent example. Not one grimace or wink throughout the court. I was proud of us.

In fact, I kind of look forward to doing it again.

[archangelbeth]

The only one I tried to get out of was the rape/molestation case. I went up to the judge and said I didn't think I could be objective about it. I was called for another, that boded to be interesting, but it got settled out of court, so all we got was the guy with a suspended driver's license RUNNING A RED LIGHT IN FRONT OF A COP as he drove his wife home from the hospital with a broken ankle.

Finally, well, guilty. But we took a long time about it because, well, broken ankle. I hope the judge took that into account... but... RUNNING A RED LIGHT IN FRONT OF A COP. Stupid.

[johnpalmer.livejournal.com]

I'm glad to hear you're doing it...

I had a weird revelation when I recognized just how important the jury is to the defendent in a criminal trial.

The cops, and the prosecutor, they think the defendent is guilty. They want to see a conviction.

The judge, well, the judge sees many such cases. Maybe the judge has a gut feeling about guilt or innocence, but one person, more or less, in prison isn't going to ruin the judge's sleep.

If the jurors don't care, no one else on the planet is going to. To all the rest of the world, it'll just be a conviction, if the verdict comes back guilty.

So, I was glad that the crime I was on a jury for was one where there was no real question of guilt. Of course, I was the alternate so I didn't even have to worry that much.