I’ve only served on jury duty once, and it was kinda fucked up. Child abuse case, and we were all kinda on the fence leaning toward defendant was guilty, but the evidence presented was just absolute dogshit. Lots of reasonable doubts.
Found the dude not guilty on the premise that we’d rather let a guilty piece of shit off the hook than risk convicting someone who’s innocent, but it felt real fuckin icky to give that verdict over what was most likely just a lazy investigation by the cops.
Hope the kid turned out okay… must have absolutely zero faith in the legal system because of that.
You did the right thing. It’s also important that cops and prosecutors do their job and stop relying on horrible accusations to be enough to convict anyone they want.
We’re close enough to the French https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reign_of_Terror as it is. I still think Al Franken really didn’t do anything seriously wrong.
You wouldn’t believe the amount of cases we shelve because cops are incompetent. Or maybe you will if you know anything about cops.
A lot of true crime stories start with “the cops did nothing for the first 2 weeks” or “a lot of evidence went missing and the lead detective got busy” or "they said it was just a runaway case until a body showed up. Cops are dumb as dog shit and care only about protecting and serving themselves. Sure there are some good cops but not enough.
i remember seeing one youtube, where a cousin/friend was suspected of murder, but the cops dint question him or did anything. many people in the comments said the cop was likely related so they ended the INVESTIGATIon of the killing.
and LAZY, they wont bother with small petty crimes.
Though it’s important to remember that modern juries expect CSI-level investigations from the cops, where you can simply “enhance” a photo until the suspect is easily identifiable and all criminals coat the crime scene in semen prior to fleeing, so if there’s no clear footage or DNA evidence, a lot of people think that must mean the cops are incompetent.
CSI show exaggerates those things dont really happen in real life at all, they dont have fancy way of detecting blood, footprints, fingerprints, or some microscopic evidence. also fingerprints have been shown to be extremely unreliable as of the latest research.
Yep, but good luck convincing a jury who raised on CSI/NCIS/etc. shows.
I don’t remember the name, but some lawyer on YouTube explained that exactly the problem you all had, is why he doesn’t struggle defending someone who is “obviously” guilty.
You can’t really know that right of the bat. You need at least some good evidence. Basically he is making sure that all the other people do their job correctly.
As one of those kids, he’ll probably turn out okay. As a juror, it’s better to let a piece of shit go free than make an innocent person rot in jail.
When the kid grows up I would almost guarantee that he would make the same decision.
it’s better to let a piece of shit go free than make an innocent person rot in jail.
In both cases the piece of shit goes free. Which is somehow really hard for people to understand.
Sorry you had to deal with that. It sounds like you did the job properly, as shitty as that is.
This is only punishing the other jurors stuck there too. Unless they are putting out enough ppm to be noticeable even 15 feet away in an open air room.
Fartmaxxing.
I don’t understand you humans.
Why does “everyone else has to suffer” if you are stuck with jury duty?
What are you?
No idea, but pretty certain that i’m not the same species that i read about every day in the news.
A meat Popsicle?
Pretty easy to get out of, right? I’m sure no prosecutor would keep you if you stated plainly that you detest cops and would never trust a word that comes out of their snouts. I’ve also heard of people claiming to have biases against all races but their own just to get out of jury duty, although at least once, I’ve heard of a judge asking jurists who made such claims for proof of past statements along those lines or be slapped with contempt of court charges. Not sure proclaiming to be a racist is the direction I would go in, but to each their own, I suppose.
Nah, you keep all that secret, manage to get on the jury anyway, then vote not guilty no matter what.
Unless it’s a civil case. Then you just automatically rule in favor of whichever party has less money.
Of course, always go for jury nullification (or be the lone dissenting vote if your state requires a unanimous jury) if you can, but this is for when you aren’t able to put in the time for whatever reason
i was in last fall, and people had to come up with long drawn out explanation, convoluted biases. you cant just say it outright now.
I’m of the mind that if you’re being criminally tried, your likely guilty. Not always, obviously, but that’s enough to say to get me off any jury.
Its true, the cops never do anything wrong, always just assume they did everything by the book.
It’s not like cops would ever lie to close the case or prosecutors would frame someone to get a conviction. Never in my life have I heard about something like that happening.
I’m not going to try and defend my take; i acknowledge it’s a shitty one, and I’ll own it. My original comment was poorly worded, though, when it comes to my stance. "I’m not trying to argue that this is a good or fair way to think. I’m just trying to clarify what I meant in my original comment.
My baseline is that they’re likely guilty, not that I blindly believe they’re guilty simply for being in a court room. I’m suspicious by nature, and the fact that you’re being tried (and that they have enough evidence to bring you to court) doesn’t lend itself to me believing your innocence. This clearly conflicts with the innocent until proven guilty concept, which makes me a poor juror to select.
I also take a lot of stock in evidence - which by its nature points to someone having done a given action. Not necessarily the person on trial, however. My point is that it’s easier to prove a positive than it is to prove a negative (i.e., innocence).
So it’s more of: I think you probably did this, and I believe what I can see and measure (and those things frequently point to guilty) than you’re guilty before you even take the stand.
If they have good evidence, like CCTV photo or something putting the accused far away from the crime, obviously my stance would change. What I was trying to [poorly] get at in my first comment is my suspicious nature. That pre-disposition makes a bad juror to select. That nature may not be fair, and it’s a character flaw, certainly.
Jesus. No, man. That is not the right way to think. The consequences of finding an innocent person guilty are not just bad for that person, they are bad for the entire justice system, and the society that it serves.
I get that you are partly saying that to get off jury duty, but I just don’t want to let that slide. The courts are a vital barrier against corrupt cops, sure, but even upstanding honest cops could easily see someone as guilty because of their own unconscious biases or just the bad luck of circumstance making someone look guilty. It happens all the time.
My friend’s dad, now a retired judge, was the second lawyer who defended Lindy Chamberlain, and actually got her released from the bullshit charge of murder.
She was the famous case in Australia where her baby got eaten by a dingo. The cops thought she’d killed her baby, because she was “cold and unemotional” while being questioned. So they just did not look at the evidence properly, her first defence team sucked, and she got found guilty, even though there was tons of evidence that a dingo had indeed just come and grabbed her baby from her tent and dragged it off.
If the cops look at you and get a feeling you are guilty, they will act on that feeling. You need a court, with a process, to try and detach all that human gut instinct away from the actual facts, to find the truth of the matter.
Your fellow jurors are suffering enough, why do you have to make it worse?
I really enjoyed my stint as a juror. Never tried to weasel out of it either.
It’s an important civic duty. For every opportunity to find Luigi did nothing wrong, there is a terrible case.
I had a friend who had a 8 month jury stint over a infamous and grusome child murder. They had to review detailed forensic evidence. He had to go to therapy for panic attacks for years.
if you have alot of time on your hands. but in most cases people cant afford to take work off just do it, they lose out on alot of money. and most states pay very little, like a few bucks to 15/day if you are selected. federal might pay more. difference between 5$ and few hundred or more is quite significant.
I served once, and it was an interesting experience, I learned to trust the court system more than I did before, at least for the civil trial I sat.
Years later I was on call for selection. During the selection process I agreed, when the lawyer asked, that false imprisonment needed to mean they couldn’t leave, i.e. they were locked up. That was enough to eliminate me. I didn’t want to be on a criminal trial that sounded like it was going to last weeks.
In short, it’s easy enough to get out of serving, there’s no reason to be a jerk.
I’ve always wanted to do jury duty. Never been called.
seems more likely depending how they get juror rolls. they usually target voter rolls, than DMV RECORDs, and then go down the list from them. also many people noticed if you voted frequently or recently you almost guaranteed to get one within 6month to a year. thats why people in other forums mentioned they stopped voting because of this too much of a hassle and it hurts thier income. or they just ignore the summons, even if they send another “warning summonrs”
I vote in every election and have never been called.
i was called 6month 1year every time after voting, lucikly most of those time they dint call my group number except last year. and there were posts on other forums where this happened too. west coast, i looked up the statistics, as fo 2023, our state only choose about 150k jurors every year, out of how eligible jurors int he state(which is 8million potential). but we know they must choose the same people year after year, and avoid others.
Obviously it depends on your location, but you can probably just sign up. Around here, you contact the county court system (which is how our juries are administered), give them your contact info, and wait for a case. You’re limited to volunteering once per year, because some retirees would keep doing it just to stay busy.
Cool, I can’t volunteer here. But I was able to register in case they don’t have my address.
also a interesitng thing they get you with, is that you can be called federal and superior(county court) in the same year, and one does not excuse the other if you did it already. so they can DOUBLE dip on people.
You can tell the lawyers you don’t want to be selected. They typically don’t want people on the jury that aren’t taking the responsibility seriously
1 Angry Man
That’s a lot of food. You could feed a family of 4 on that.
The family that farts together stays together.
Simply because nobody else will have them. Too much ass air!
They’re going to eat from the same container for the whole week. It’ll get better every day.
Like bigos.
12 angry farts
This is genius, though personally I’d the eggs into egg salad and add plentiful fried onions.
here we didn’t get to bring our own meals. We weren’t even allowed to go home or keep our phones at all, nor get visitors
thats only if you get selected to be one of the 12 jurors, or alternates. we just sat in the seats waiting to be potentially called in the room.
oh ok. then that’s the same here
Ya’ll if you don’t want to serve just tell the court you know what jury nullification is and ask to be dismissed. No need for biological warfare.
In some places, telling potential jurors about jury nullification is considered juror tampering.
It’s better to phrase it differently without actually saying the words “jury nullification”. Something like, “I would vote not guilty if the law is unjust.”
i was sitting in a juror room last year, and a few did it differently. the most annoying one was the SJW, she was telling how she was activist, how she organizes protests, events for political protests, it works, but the court will atempt to keep you a very long time if you try this though, while they eliminate other potential jurors. one was showing huge biases towards LEO, how they wernt helped and what not. and another one was a former german lawyer, how she thinks having a Jury is very wrong and biased.
by the fourth day they got really nervous, and just kept most of the jurors that were chosen, because they knew the more time goes on people will try to use these tactics to get out.
Some sauerkraut also. Gives it a tang.
Bring enough for everyone that way you’ll guarantee a quick verdict.
Cheese would go well with it too. Wash it down with some organic olive oil and for dessert sugar free gummy bears from a disreputable temu seller.
With a side of shredded lettuce just to make things interesting.
:D
