That's one of the reasons our state has stopped using voter rolls and is using drivers licenses, and other lists of residents.Originally Posted by otakenji
Order of Kilopi
That's one of the reasons our state has stopped using voter rolls and is using drivers licenses, and other lists of residents.
Cum catapultae proscriptae erunt tum soli proscript catapultas habebunt.
Administrator
Same in Ohio.
One way to get out of jury duty, work for a law firm - told to me by a friend who worked as an administrative assisstant for a firm. Just the fact that you work for a law firm will get you out of it.
Vulcan Administrator
There was a conversation at my last jury duty that went something like this:
"Do you know anyone in this courtroom?"
[WOMAN STANDS UP]
"Whom do you know, ma'am?"
"The bailiff, Your Honor."
"And just how do you know the bailiff, ma'am?"
"He's my husband."
I don't think she was picked, but then more weren't picked than were, so I don't know if that had anything to do with it.
Everything I need to know I learned through Googling.
Moderator
One jury panel, the judge asked if anyone knew any of the parties involved. One man raised his hand. Almost simultaneously, the judge and the counsels for both sides smiled at him and said, "Hi, John!" He was an attorney.
Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by ignorance or stupidity.
Isaac Asimov
Moderation will be in purple.
Rules for Posting to This Board
Established Member
Regarding getting out of jury duty...
In New Jersey, jury duty notices aren't sent via certified mail, or any other means that allows confirmation that the notice has been successfully delivered to the correct address by the Post Office. I've heard of people that just throw the notices away, and say if they're ever asked if they received the notices, they'll just say, "Nope."
By the way, this isn't something I'd ever do. I see jury duty as part of my civic responsibility as a citizen of the U.S. I've been called into the petit jury pool a couple of times, and into a grand jury pool once, but due to random chance, I've never actually gotten to serve on either type of jury.
Moderator & Sausage Gawd
My wife recently got her first call for jury duty. She was a bit annoyed by this because she's a hair dresser. If she doesn't work, she doesn't get paid. But she decided not to make any great fuss about getting out it. She doesn't like whiners and didn't want to look like one. When her group was called in, the judge went through the usual routine of asking if anyone had a good reason for being excused. She stayed mum at first but after hearing one seemingly minor excuse after another being accepted, she tentatively raised her hand. The conversation went something like:
Judge: Yes, ma'aam, you have a reason for being excused?
The WifeŽ: Your honor, I'm a hairdresser. I don't get any paid time off and I have bills to pay.
Judge: Well, we can't have people walking around with bad hair, can we? You're excused.
By the way, he wasn't being at all sarcastic...at least not in a mean way. She said he was a pretty cool and laid back old guy and wouldn't have minded serving if he was the trial judge.
─────────────────────────────────────────────
My moderation comments will appear in this color.
To report a post (even this one) to the moderation team, click the reporting icon in the lower-left corner of the post:
─────────────────────────────────────────────
◄ Rules For Posting To This Board ► ◄ Forum FAQs ► ◄ Conspiracy Theory Advice ► ◄ Alternate Theory Advice ►
Order of Kilopi
Just a detail I'd like to add to this. The case took two weeks. Specifically 9 sitting days including the deliberations. The next trial, a murder trial, was expected to last 4-6 months. Yeek.
Administrator
LoL
I guess bad hair would be an injustice.
Moderator
The last jury I was on was for a criminal case. The ADA was an attractive, blond, young woman. Wanting to downplay that image, she wore conservative dresses, glasses, and had her obviously long hair pulled up. In other words, every man's naughty librarian fantasy.
Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by ignorance or stupidity.
Isaac Asimov
Moderation will be in purple.
Rules for Posting to This Board
Order of Kilopi
The second case I was on, the judge had the attorneys, defendant, and witnesses all stand up at the front and asked if anyone had ever seen any of these people before. All of us raised our hands, since the arresting officer was also involved in our previous case. The judge decided that was ok. If anything, it may have been an advantage for the defendant since those of us who were on the first jury knew the officer had basically been part of a drunken brawl. We acquitted those first defendants but convicted in the second case.
Cum catapultae proscriptae erunt tum soli proscript catapultas habebunt.
Order of Kilopi
The one time I was called for jury duty, I actually got picked for the jury. I was surprised, because it was a DUI case, and I admitted to being a non-drinker and also to having a father who was an ex-cop.
At any rate, the witnesses and defendant were not in the courtroom during the jury selection, but they did read out everybody's names and we were supposed to say if we knew any of the names. After the 12 jurors had been selected and all the other alternates were sent home, we were waiting for the trial to begin, and one of the jurors ran into a coworker in the hallway. After some discussion, they realized the coworker was a witness in the case we were empaneled for.
Apparently, the name read out in the courtroom, which the investigating officer had written down off the witness's driver's license, was the witness's maiden name, and the coworker on the jury only knew her by her married name.
So, with one ineligible juror, and no alternates to replace them from, they had to reschedule the trial and we all got sent home.
That was probably 15 years ago, and I have not been called since.
My wife got a summons for grand jury service a couple years ago, but got out of it without even having to make a personal appearance because her service was scheduled for just a week after we were expected to return home from China with our newly-adopted special-needs son.
Order of Kilopi
Where I live, the judge would probably send you home to change, possibly with the help of a judicial marshal. In theory, he or she could issue a contempt of court citation, as you would be violating the instructions given when you were called.
Order of Kilopi
imho, it doesn't. Of course, there are many attorneys who will excoriate jurors for deciding "wrongly" when a case goes against them. Sorry, lawyer guys, it's the system you are sworn to work within and uphold.
In some jurisdictions (iirc, the Bronx, which, like the other four New York City buroughs is a New York State county, and Philadephia), mistrust of police (in Philadelphia, there was, iirc, a federal civil rights case which showed that mistrust was not misplaced) and prosecutors was so high for a time that juries would almost never convict -- the assumption was simply that police were lying.
Order of Kilopi
Well, I've just got to blow my cover and divulge that I'm currently working as a paralegal in a small law office. We had a civil case where we claimed a police officer was negligent in a high-speed pursuit that got up to 80 mph and was headed right into the middle of downtown of a city with a population of about 80,000. OK, it was 3:00 a.m. But the guy being pursued, at 80 mph, ran through a red light and broadsided a totally uninvolved car, killing the 21-year-old mother of the 2-year-old daughter we represented.
The city was represented by a couple attorneys from a large, high-powered law firm, one an attractive, blonde, young woman.
The jury sided with the cop and the city. We lost. But we appealed to the state supreme court on a number of points, one being that the attractive, blonde, young woman attorney had violated a number of court orders disallowing certain topics from being mentioned during trial. She was trying to prejudice the jury against the dead 21-year-old mother, who was not exactly a pillar of the community (all that being irrelevant, of course).
Well, we won the appeal. The supreme court was livid with the attractive, blonde, young woman attorney, Ms. White, and their criticism of her was too awesome not to share:
The conduct of [the] Citys counsel, Ms. White, was
indefensible. Her questioning of Theresa reveals that Ms. White
surrendered, without resistance, to the impulse to win her case by
bludgeoning the character of the dead. She pursued this course of
action undeterred by court orders that unequivocally forbade her
chosen course of action. We condemn Ms. Whites conduct. We
admonish her during the retrial of this case to exercise hypervigilance
in the cause of scrupulously avoiding improper questioning.
That was a big win for us. Unfortunately, it just means the case goes back to the trial court to be retried. Hopefully, the defense will just settle the case out of court this time. To defend the case, they ended up spending about 4 times (high 6 figures) what we probably would have settled for (low-medium 6 figures).
You win some, you lose some.
Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.
Order of Kilopi
Yeah. That was a joke, though at this point in the thread it is probably wise to point out that one should attempt to get out of jury duty (for non-serious reasons) at his or her own risk, since doing so is a crime in itself. If you think you have a real reason why you should be exempt, let it be know. Probably best to not "play games" with it though.
Personally, I'd enjoy it. Of course, the interruption to your personal schedule is a huge inconvenience, but it's important.
Vulcan Administrator
I was called years ago to be on a federal grand jury at a time when I was incredibly busy at work. (There's a federal courthouse within hiking distance of where I live.) I would asked to be excused, and they'd put me off for three months and ask again. I think I put them off three or four times before it got to summertime, and the project was winding down, so I could accept. I came in for the orientation, then a few weeks later had a vacation planned when they called us in, so begged off. (You can do that with a grand jury - since you're on call for months at a time, they always have plenty of extra bodies.) That was the last time they called us.
Everything I need to know I learned through Googling.
Order of Kilopi
I've been called twice, never made it out of the alternates pool.
Established Member
I live in Pennsylvania, where lists of prospective jurors are usually pulled from the voter registration rolls, probably because anyone eligible to vote also meets the requirements to serve on a jury. I've been registered since I turned 18, so for twenty years now, and I've never been called. Once I received a questionnaire in the mail to fill out and return.
Order of Dr. Kilopi
I'm going in tomorrow. So, taking advice from this thread, I'll tell the judge that I believe in a 1 strike policy and that everyone is guilty until proven innocent. Also, I should mention that I'm an avid drinker, am currently drunk, and that I need to use the restroom.
Or something along those lines.
Established Member
I've been called several times, but only sat once...it was a rape trial, the dimbulb admitted to it on the stand...he didn't see the sunshine for an extended period (for all I know, he's still behind bars).
Got a relative who committed some dumb acts which compounded upon themselves, resulting in his enjoying room&board at state expense for 5 to 7...
The last few times I've been called for jury duty, a doctor's note gets me off. I'm diabetic, and you can set your watch by my frequent trips to the little boys' room. Not exactly something that contributes to the swift execution of justice.
Moderator
The first jury I served on was a criminal case, drug possession. We heard testimony for parts of two days, then retired to the jury room to deliberate.
One man said, "I guess we need to select a foreman. I brought a pencil and can write things down. Anyone else want the job?" He was our foreman.
The first thing he did was ask if anyone believed the defendant was quilty. No one did.
So we spent the next 30 minutes or so discussing how inept both counsels had been. It was the last chance we'd have to talk together, and we didn't want them to think we hadn't deliberated at least a little.
Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by ignorance or stupidity.
Isaac Asimov
Moderation will be in purple.
Rules for Posting to This Board
Order of Kilopi
If you WANT to get off, you probably can find a better way than that! But do you really want to get off? It's usually not that big a deal and you get to see a very interesting process.
Cum catapultae proscriptae erunt tum soli proscript catapultas habebunt.
Order of Kilopi
I think the grand jury system is awful. AWFUL. It's like they empanel a grand jury when they don't think they can show probable cause at a preliminary hearing. The grand jury is conducted by the prosecutor only. The potential defendant and his attorney are not even allowed to be there. Of course, the GJ just decides whether the defendant should be held over for trial... or not.
We had a case where a son and his wife (our clients) were indicted by a grand jury for the murder of his father (a university professor!). We discovered that the police officer witnesses repeatedly LIED to the grand jury, resulting in the indictment. Our clients spent 5 months in jail awaiting trial on murder before an anonymous tip led the police to the real killers. Our clients were let go, but we sued the police for lying to the grand jury and causing our clients to spend 5 months in jail, a considerable damage!
Several months after we filed, the U.S. Supreme Court decided in another case that, in essence, our clients have no recourse to sue these officers, even though they knowingly lied (Rehburg v. Paulk - a horrible decision). The officers can be prosecuted for perjury (unlikely), but they are absolutely immune from civil suit in giving testimony to a grand jury. So our clients wrongly spent 5 months in jail, and now they can't do anything about it.
You win some, you lose some.
Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.
Order of Kilopi
I'm angry just having read this. Prosecutorial and police misconduct really get under my craw.
Order of Dr. Kilopi
You're not alone. Rarely in my life have I said, "I'm glad the police are here." Mostly it's a fear of someone who can ruin my life in 10 seconds.
Established Member
I luckily never got called in for jury duty until a few months ago, just after I moved abroad and was most definitely unable to do it. Funny thing was per US law you just keep voting in whatever county you last lived in before moving abroad, which for me was Cuyahoga County in Ohio (ie Cleveland), and on the Internet while you could say you moved out of state there was no option for saying you'd moved abroad! (Guess it's not a normal thing for a Clevelander?) So the first time I just got a new summons cause I couldn't fill out the form properly, the second time I had to email them specifically to explain the situation and get it sorted.
They told me that I still am on the voter rolls, but hmm should probably double check that...
Order of Kilopi
You'd better check,, that might mean you're also liable to pay American income tax still.
__________________________________________________
Reductionist and proud of it.
Being ignorant is not so much a shame, as being unwilling to learn. Benjamin Franklin
Chase after the truth like all hell and you'll free yourself, even though you never touch its coat tails. Clarence Darrow
A person who won't read has no advantage over one who can't read. Mark Twain
Vulcan Administrator
In all of my juries, the judge selected the foreman - and it was me for the assault trial.
Everything I need to know I learned through Googling.
Senior Member
It must be the pointed ears...you look like a "good listener". (big happy grinning smillee face)
Last edited by R.A.F.; 2012-Jul-17 at 05:49 PM. Reason: edited because I'm tired of no smillees
Moderator
For all of my juries, the jurors selected the foreman, and only when we began deliberations.
Which made it kind of interesting. During the trial, the jurors either sat by number or randomly. When we delivered the verdict, the foreman went in first and sat in the seat closest to the bench.
I was the foreman for a civil case. (I had a pencil.)
Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by ignorance or stupidity.
Isaac Asimov
Moderation will be in purple.
Rules for Posting to This Board
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote