the worst part about jury duty is all the sitting around waiting to see if your going to be picked. there is only so much paper reading and thumb twiddling i can stand. i sat in a huge room with several hundred people. i ended up getting picked for some reserve jury pool...where they pick you if they need you in case the jury people they did select don't pan out for some reason. this amounted to more sitting around. the whole experience was just sitting around for several hours. i was sitting next to some decent looking girl who apparently lived in the rural area. she was dumb as a rock. it turns out she was in college as a full-time student. i then went on to politely tell her she was wasting her time by even showing up. she had the jury summons in her hand and i showed her where she could have just noted she was a student and mailed it in. i got a good laugh out of that. i guess it gets a little more interesting if your actually picked. lol
It's not like the movies where they question everyone individually. Basically everyone sits in the courtroom and they ask blanket yes or no questions to everyone. I got called on case a couple of weeks ago. The defendent was charged with possesion with intent to distribute at least 400g of cocaine. One of the questions the defense lawyer asked was if any of our close freinds or relatives were in law enforcement. Quite a few raised their hands. He then went around to each one of them and asked them if they would give more credibility to a testifying officer just because he was a cop/DEA/whatever. They told us going in that the quite ones usually get selected. But I was the last juror, number 60. There was little chance of me getting picked even though the DA told me that there have been cases where #60 has gotten picked. I didn't say a word and I wasn't selected. That said, I would never do anything to intentionally make myself not get selected. Trial by jury is a fundamental right in this country. I believe it is wrong and selfish to deprive some one of the fairest and most impartial jury available just because you find it incovenient and waste of your time. Heaven forbid I'm ever int the defendents chair, I hope that prospective jurors, who might otherwise be intelligent and compasionate, aren't so selfish to deprive me of my best opportunity for justice. Six years ago, at my first summons for jury duty, I was made to fill out a questionaire. But the tone of it (questions on the death penalty) I knew it would be a murder case. It was, a high profile one that was on the news. They had already selected 10 jurors and only need 3 more. I intentionally gave conflicting answers on my questionaire. I was not selected. Today I regret trying to get out of it. Not that I wanted to serve or that I think I would have been seleced. I just wish I wasn't so selfish and was man enough to be honest.
I got picked for a DWI trial once. It was worth doing to see how the system works. Say something ridiculous if you want to get out.
I guess that is what I mean I see more folx trying to Jump off the jury and get out of it how can we appeal to people to participate more Rocket River
So what happens if I just don't show up when I get a summons? /got a summons once /wasted a bunch of my time
I think both of those would help. I have yet to be summoned, but will gladly serve... I'm going to keep my mouth shut until I'm on a jury, darn it.
So I guess if you go in there, pretending not to speak good English they will strike you from the jury. Right? I might need to pull a Borat next time.
Eh last time I was selected for jerky duty I was the defense attorney's worst nightmare. I was already in a bad mood because I had to take a day off work (which the State takes off your holiday time. I didn't know that until then), wake up early, find a parking spot in downtown Houston, sit in a huge auditorium in tiny seats crammed together like sardaines, then stand in a chairless basement while they told everyone what jury duty meant. The defendant in my case was accused of forging checks. The attorney was apparently going to play the "bad police framed my poor wholesome boy" card. He led off asking if anyone knew anyone in law enforcement. I raised my hand. He asked me for specifics, and I told him that I had an uncle who was a cop in San Francisco, and myself and a cousin were officers for TDCJ. The dude looked at me like I had the plague. I picked up my book and got ready to leave. The attorney then asked if anyone had ever known anyone who had had their identity stolen. I raised my hand again, and said that a housekeeper had once stolen a check from my checkbook and tried to forge a check for $450. People started looking at me funny, thinking I was just trying to come up with excuses. I fell asleep on the gallery bench while they went through the rest of voir dire. The defendant changed his plea to guilty during the process, and everyone went home. I sometimes think that being in any kind of law enforcement should be an automatic deferrment. No defense attorney in his right mind would select you.
I've never been called to jury duty, but I wouldn't mind having the experience of being on a jury at some point. Though I worry that I would be stuck in some hung jury thing because I'd want to be the Henry Fonda guy.
FYI: Jurors in federal court get paid $40/day. I recently served on a month-long Federal trial, so this turned out to be some nice gravy on top of my weekly paycheck.
