I have jury duty for the first time tomorrow...

[TastesLikeChicken]

Originally posted by: Alistar7

Originally posted by: TastesLikeChicken
If you get selected to be in a jury pool and go through voir dire or even end up getting selected as a member of a trial jury it's actually pretty cool to see our justice system in action and be a part of it, imo. I've only been called to jury duty one time but ended up on a jury in a rather interesting trial. Unfortunately one of the witnesses testified about the accused having prior convictions, at which point the judge sent us out of the room and ended up calling a mistrial.

If anything else jury duty usually involves a large number of people so it's almost a sure thing that there will be at least a few hotties to ogle.

Was that a witness for the prosecution? Either way, what idiot lawyer would prep anyone for testifying without covering that base? I understand you can't always control what the wintness will say, but before they even took the stand they should have been made well aware that was off limits.

Yep. It was a witness for the prosecution...the accused's ex-GF. It appeared she was out to nail him and got a bit emotional in the process. Apparently this guy did some really screwed up things to her though. The prosecuting attorney winced the minute she mentioned his priors and immediately knew it was going to mistrial.

The funny thing was that the prosecuting attorney looked and sounded like Joe Pesci. It was like being in My Cousin Vinnie, Part II.

 

[ttown]

I had to sit in a big room with at least 150 other people until a judge called for a jury selection.

First day was sitting around for a few hours, then got grouped with ~50 others to fill out a questionare.
Next day, sat in a room and there was some basic discussion about elements of the case and the judge and both lawyers asked questions. Questions were like: "Who here owns a firearm?"
"Why do you own one?" "Have you ever used it in self-defense?" "Have you ever pointed it at another human?"
Some of the questions seemed very obscure at the time, but ended up being relevant to the case -- like "Have you ever purchased a used car?" "Was it from a private owner?"

The written questionare had some questions basically getting at if anyone has had prior knowlege of the case, or if we've ever been a victim or known anyone in a similar situation as what the victim/accused was, etc.

I ended up being picked for a case in Superior court -- and it turned out to be a "attempted murder in the first degree" case.
I thought the whole process was extremely interesting, and also very nerve-racking -- knowing that i was part of a life-altering decision for someone.

The case lasted more than a week -- and we had to promise not to watch/read anything about it in the news.
There were tons of experts and witnesses that testified, and I ended up with ~15 pages of notes -- 90% of which were useless when it came down to deliberation.
Duing the trial, you don't have much of a sense of where things are going logic/story-wise, so I took notes on everything.

Even during the trial, there's a lot of sitting and waiting. Several times in the middle of testimony all of us jurists would get ushered into a room while the judge and lawyers talked/argued.

After the trial we deliberated for days -- which was interesting also, just to hear other peoples versions of what we had all just sat through.

Overall, it was quite disturbing, interesting and sad -- and changed my perspective on life (in a good way).
I suspect all of the jurists were affected in some way.

Even though the case was generally sad, I'm glad I got chosen for it versus a boring traffic issue or a contract dispute.