I was selected for two weeks of Jury Duty.
In the US, all adult citizens who are active voters are thrown into a potential pool of jurors, and if your name comes up, you spend anywhere from two to four (or more!) weeks in jury duty.
There's several types of jury duty, from the two main types at the county level as well as the special selections for major cases and those from the Federal courthouse. (If your city has a Federal District courthouse, that is.) At the County level, there's Grand Jury, which you are a member of for about four weeks at minimum reviewing criminal cases as to whether there's enough evidence to try the accused, and Petit Jury, which covers actual criminal and civil trials.
Over the years, I've been selected for Jury Duty three previous times: Petit Jury in the mid 90s, Federal District Court in the mid-00s, and as part of a huge pool of potential jurors (200+ people) for a First Degree Murder case in the mid-10s. For that first round of Petit Jury, I was an alternate juror on a criminal case and then a juror on a civil case. I was slotted to show up as a potential juror for a Federal case, but the parties settled at some obnoxious hour of the night (I think it was 2 AM when I received the phone call that my services were no longer required). For the Murder One charge*, my stance on capital punishment caused my dismissal from the juror pool. Before you say "oh, that's nice, just say you're against the death penalty and you can get out of it", I can tell you that I spent the next 30-45 minutes like I was being worked over by a couple of cops to get me to confess. The prosecutors basically wanted to make absolutely sure I wasn't just trying to get out of doing my civic duty, and it was... NOT PLEASANT.**
This time around I was back at my old Petit Jury summons, so I arranged with my employer to make sure they were aware I might be out for a few weeks or more, and readied myself for his past Monday.
To my surprise, I wasn't required to attend, so after my dismissal I just started up work as usual.
The next several days were the same: unless you're already attached to a case, you do not have to go to the Courthouse.
And tonight I received the following news:
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| Wow. |
I was not expecting that. I fully expected to have to check in sometime over the next week --well, except for Thanksgiving Day, that is-- but I guess the case docket isn't very full right now.
And while I'm not superstitious, I sure hope I didn't burn all of my good luck this year having the easiest jury duty service ever.
*For those not familiar with First Degree Murder, it's premeditated murder, and it carries with it a potential death sentence.
**When I finally was released and went home, I casually mentioned to my wife the name of the defendant --who was present the entire time while I and a half dozen others were being grilled-- and she said "HOLY SHIT! You were going to be on THAT case??!!!" Turns out she'd been following it closely in the news.
I always think jury duty sounds very interesting. I've really gotten into watching various law YouTube channels over the past couple of years, and it's been interesting to learn more about how American trials work (which, from my understanding, isn't totally dissimilar to the way it works in the UK). However, when I bemoaned being unable to ever go on jury duty to my husband (since I'm a foreigner) he reminded me (having done the UK equivalent himself) that it can be very boring and/or unpleasant if it's a criminal case with a gruesome crime and you need to see and hear all the details of it. I figured he had a point.
ReplyDeleteAmerican law is based off of British Common Law --being a former British colony-- so there are quite a few similarities between the two. I can say that yes, it is quite boring at times (especially if the judge is really old and somewhat slow, like what happened in my criminal case in 1996, which was drug related), but a case can turn on a few words that are added or omitted. In the civil case brought back in 1996, the plaintiff alleged his hearing difficulties stemmed from an accident at his place of employment, and he'd filed a lawsuit. If he'd have just said the incident was an accident caused by negligence, he would likely have won, but in the filing with the court the plaintiff alleged it was deliberate, which it obviously was not. Considering the primary defendant was actually working with the source of the accident when it happened, and it was just pure luck he wasn't affected, those few word additions of "deliberate" in the lawsuit made all the difference. (To be fair, the plaintiff had a history of hearing loss since the 1970s, so I'm not sure he would have won even then, but he would have had a better shot at a win regardless.)
DeleteOkay, I do have to explain one thing: as part of a jury, you're not allowed to do any independent investigations concerning a case. All that stuff you find in Mystery/Detective novels and shows have to be thrown out the window, because you're asked to judge a case based on the evidence presented to you. If you try to circumvent that in any way, the least you can have happen to you is that you're dismissed from the jury, and the worst... Well, you could find yourself arrested and charged with perjury all by yourself. Or worse, if your misbehavior emerges years later, any conviction made could be thrown out because of your shenanigans.
Grand Jury.... That sucks. One of my coworkers had to do a stint of Grand Jury, as well as my mom, and they both reported separately that it was the most mentally draining and depressing thing they've ever done. After a while you become numb to the crimes and the evidence you have to evaluate, and that's the scariest thing.