Well, I can’t talk about the current trial and jury experience except with an emoticon. :mad:
However, the last time I was on a jury was about 4 years ago and it was rather frightening. It never should have gone to trial, domestic abuse case, both of them called 911.
Problem was there was literally no evidence of any kind except he said, she said.
Prosecutor and Public Defender were both idiots who were reprimanded by the judge numerous times.
Then we go deliberate, first vote, 9 voted guilty, based on what?
They wanted to send him away because he was arrested and on trial.
Finally after much back and forth it was 9 not guilty and 3 guilty.
Deadlock. So we would have to come back in the morning.
What? I can’t lose another day of work the 3 guilty voters said, so
they changed their votes to not guilty.
These are our “peers”.
Once this one is over I’ll tell what is going on…:roll:
Did my duty last year and can’t say it was all that interesting but I answered the call.
Funny thing, I lost 5 days work, paid out about $50 in parking not to mention fuel back and forth and got a check for about $35 or so.:shock: I guess jury duty would make a poor career choice.
I was on a criminal trial jury over 5 years ago. Guy kills his father and while his sister is in the hospital with cancer, he takes her medication.
All the dead beat would say is that his father provoked him. The father had over 50 stab wounds from head to torso, the dead beat had a scrape on his arm.
Took over two weeks and was definitely not a Law and Order episode.
Just got released from duty, defendant convicted of 2nd degree assault and possession of deadly weapon with intent to do bodily harm.
No idea of sentence.
I thought it was a very clear case given the evidence presented but a few of jurors kept speculating and vacillating and one just stonewalled completely.
So we had to come back today. Things were quite heated last night.
This morning the stonewaller said she had time to reflect and decided that it was partly her being an engineer that led her to believe she needed absolute certainty. She concluded that was unreasonable and had to make a judgement from the evidence presented.
So we all left feeling satisfied with the outcome, but something tells me once this young man concludes his sentence he’ll wind back in trouble with the law.
One side note, I wound up giving my card to one juror who is looking at a purchase of a 7 unit apt. bldg and another to one looking for a house!
Networking in a jury chamber.
Marc,
Love the no B.S. judges. I sat on one jury where every time the lawyers started getting long winded the judge would start hitting his forehead with the gavel. Things always got interesting shortly thereafter when he started chewing on the offending lawyer to speed it up. For example, this was a self-defense shooting, and the prosecutor was grilling the forensic scientist about the ballistics. Finally the judge stopped it by reminding the prosecutor that the defendant already admitted to shooting the guy! (This was in Texas by the way).
