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Jury Duty

Started by warriorsforever, June 12, 2006, 05:48:36 pm

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Have you ever served on a jury for anything?

Yes
16 (32.7%)
No
23 (46.9%)
Been called, but excused
10 (20.4%)

Total Members Voted: 42

warriorsforever

 ;D
I just spent the day observing the wheels of justice,  I have been on jury duty three times now in the last 12 years and have been chosen two of the thr Three times.  What has your experience been? :-*

MIAMI_CANES


WCD

I was called to sit on a jury for a kidnapping and robbery of a jewelry store. The defendant's attorney questioned me for 30 minutes and then excused me from sitting on the panel. I believe in the death penalty was an answer to one question.

They chose 10 women and 2 men. There were 7 minorities and 8 of them were over 55 years of age.

I guess I didn't fit the mold.  The two men were found guilty of both crimes and sentenced to 30 years for both crimes.

WCD ;D

Uncle Ivan

Never been called, and as a conservative white male, no defense attorney's gonna want me.

sportsmom

I have been called for jury duty six times.  I think it has something to do with my last name beginning with Q.  I have only had to serve one time; a murder/bank robbery case that ended with the defendant being sentenced to death.  I never thought I would be chosen for that case because I was working as a bank teller at the time. 

After we moved from St. Francis County to Cross County I went to the court house and changed my residency for voting.  About two weeks later, I get another jury card from St. Francis County (almost exactly three years from the date of the first trial).  I took it to the Cross Couty courthouse and the clerk said that she would notify St. Francis county that I had moved.  Less than a month after that, I am notified that I have been called to serve in Cross County.  I don't know anyone who has been called as frequently as me.

memphisguy

Runaway Jury is a good book. I never have been called and I would guess I wouldn't sit either. I don't fit the profile either.

ljmom

June 13, 2006, 08:21:21 am #6 Last Edit: June 13, 2006, 08:23:38 am by ljmom
I've been called more times than I can count.  I've only served on one jury.  It was a guy trying to beat a DUI.  I wasted a day on that piece of trash. 

He was stopped for speeding and then they found out he was also drunk.  He admitted he was drinking, but denied  he was speeding... the reason they pulled him over in the first place. 

He was an insurance agent and he wanted us to find him guilty of speeding and let him off on the DUI.  I don't even know how that could have been legal, or why we needed a jury!

Well, the men on our jury were anything but conservative.  They wanted to do what the man asked.  The split was 7 men, 5 women.  The vote was 8/4 with one woman agreeing with the men.  We ended up with a hung jury because 4 of us silly females thought the guy should pay for what he'd done!  The men didn't want to "Take his living away."  He claimed, he would have lost his insurance sales job, if he'd been nailed for the DUI. 

I've been able to get off all the other times. 

I was called for an attempted murder trial.  The "victim" was well known to be a nut job and had already shot his own mother, and daughter.  He threatened to shoot a man, one day.  Not taking any chances, the man shot him first!  I told them something like this... "If the justice system had done it's job earlier, the man would've been locked up for shooting his family members.  He would not have been out threatening other people.   He's crazy, and everyone knows he WILL shoot you.  If he threatened me, I wouldn't wait for him to shoot first!"  They sent me home!

His daughter went missing a several years ago.  They found her bones, in the woods, behind his house a couple of years ago.  They can't prove who killed her. 

The Infidel

I have been twice. One criminal and one civil case. Since I am also a conservative white male they didn't want me either. "Yes sir, if your client threatened my family we would be at the morque rather than this court room". Can't imagine why they wouldn't want little ole' me on their jury!

Drama Mama ™

Been called up one time and was excused..............  I begged  to be excused  ;)  9 months pregnant  ;)  Guess they figured the chances of my going into labor or the frequent trips to the potty might interfer with the justice process  ;D    I would have been the juror that had her hand raised ..... " I gotta go potty"  :D  Or  " I need a little snack"  ;D


My husband was called up last month...... although I couldn't use the pregnant plea in my letter that  I wrote for him  ;D the excuse of the loss of wages for a self employed truck driver sure did work.    Basically, after they interviewed him they would have probably thrown him out of the court room and told him to get some  help  8)  It would have been ugly.....really .  He sounds a little like UI........ no tolerance......and would have been handing out the death sentence to basically EVERY idiot that was in the court room  :P

ljmom

These judges in Bradley County don't let you off easy.  Jobs, pretty much, don't count.   

There were three couples that served last term, here, and they never got excused.  A couple of them were drawn and had to sit on the jury, so it takes a lot to get out of jury duty here.  You just about have to be related to someone involved, in the crime.  Our police chief's niece served on three jury's last year.  She wouldn't lie about her ability to make a decision on the evidence presented... 

They have jury instruction first, then they ask who has prior knowledge of the case and can't be impartial, or for other reasons to be dismissed.  Very few get to leave.  Then the lawyers can exclude anyone they decided they don't want.  Every one else's name goes in to be drawn.  I just got lucky last time and my name never got drawn.

PHIL IS MY HERO aka RTVM

Well, bering a detective, I am on the other side of this issue.  I love it when I see a jury.  I actually enjoy my cases going to trial, because I take pride in what I do.  I haven't lost a jury trial yet, and been doing this for almost 9 years. 

I was called for jury duty once.  You can only imagine what the defense attorney did when he found out my employment information.  I got excused pretty dang quick! 

But thank you folks, for your civic duty of serving on a jury.  Now just get off here and go vote in the run-off election today!!!

my rant is over

Uncle Ivan

Quote from: PHIL IS MY HERO aka RTVM on June 13, 2006, 12:09:04 pmNow just get off here and go vote in the run-off election today!!!

Crap!  That's today?!

warriorsforever

Pope County judges don't do the work excuse, either.  The judge said, "We all have to work..."  There was a guy who tried to use the medical thing- bad back- but that didn't fly either; he ended up being picked, too.  I wanted to use the eyesight thing- I couldn't see being there...

Thank goodness, I only have one week left and my six-month tour is over until they computer pick my number AGAIN!

ljmom

You aren't supposed to have to serve, for the same jurisdiction, for three years.  I think.   If you get called up here, you can call them and tell them when you were last drawn.  They should look it up and excuse you.  That happened to a guy that was called up with me last time.

1-Adam-12

Twice.  Once I was excused and the other time I was picked for a civil case.

Uncle Ivan

Would walking out of the jury box and hugging the defendant get you excused?

If so, I may do that.

ljmom

Quote from: Uncle Ivan on June 13, 2006, 11:44:40 pm
Would walking out of the jury box and hugging the defendant get you excused?

If so, I may do that.

I don't know.  I've never wanted to get  that close to a defendant.  I did want hug the mother of a defendant last summer.  Poor woman actually figured out he was the one that had committed some crimes and turned him in.  It had to be the hardest thing she's ever done.  She was devastated, but she did the right thing.

Guetz

Been registered to vote in Arkansas for 30 years.  Last year I was finally, for the first time ever, called for jury duty.  Of the 15 dates to report we only had to go in twice (besides the initial swearing in of the jury pool).  On the first date they were choosing a jury for a case that was related to a double homicide here in Booneville.  I was chosen in the first of 6 rounds of voir dire and ended up on the jury.

This young 19 year old kid had witnessed nearly a year and a half earlier the brutal and cold blooded stabbing death of two of his friends, one of whom was his roommate in a ramshackle rental house.  The kid was rather shy and unassuming, easily led. 

The crime was perpetrated by two 20-something guys with bad reputations for violence and other bad behaviors.  Drugs were involved.  The guy, Osborne, took the two victims in his car out to a deserted and dark gas well pad in late December 2004.  The other conspirator, Bollinger, involved with this premeditated homicide took Stone, the guy on trial, to the same location. 

Once at the pre-chosen murder site, Osborne segregated one of the two victims on the pretext of looking for a bag of drugs and then proceeded to stab him repeatedly in the back and then the front.  The other victim ran to help and Osborne took a slash at him, scaring him off to run into the woods near the old Booneville city water lake.  Osborne, out of site of the remaining two (the defendant and the co-conspirator), chased down and murdered the runner and then returned to stab the first victim some more since he was still moving a little. 

Meanwhile the co-conspirator was physically restraining the defendant, keeping him from running back to his car and driving away.  Osborne and Bollinger then threatened the defendant with death if he ever told anyone what had happened, implying that perhaps they ought to just kill him right then.  They kept him, against his rather small will, with them for several hours while they cleaned up and got their stories straight before letting him return to his home, alone. 

The defendant, Stone, was approached by the police about 3 weeks later after the police had been given missing person reports for the two victims (who by that time were frozen exactly as they fell in the woods north of Booneville) and begun to investigate.  Stone initially didn't say anything but a couple hours later had his boss take him to the police station where he told exactly what had occurred.  The police initially viewed Stone as another crime victim but then later changed their thinking and charged him with obstruction of justice for not reporting the crime (as a sidebar, there is no requirement in the law to report a crime) and viewed him as a co-conspirator rather than as a person just in the wrong place at the wrong time who had been thouroughly intimidated by the perpetrators.  They kept him in jail for nearly a year and a half before bringing him to trial on the obstruction charge. 

Our jury ended up hung with a vote of 11-1 with the single vote dissenting acquittal from a woman who took a hard-a$$ed view and said that the duress this rather mild-mannered kid was under should have only lasted a few hours and that he should have reported.  She claimed, from her experience as a HS counselor, that duress in the form of a threat of death could not possibly last three weeks.  The rest of us strongly disagreed.  Judge Danielson declared a mistrial after we had deliberated for several hours and were deadlocked beyond any chance for compromise.

Stone was held in jail for ANOTHER year, until this last February, before the charges against him were dropped subsequent to the life sentence convictions of Bollinger and Osborne (another sidebar, Osborne, the actual murderer with blood upon his hands, through a fluke of law, received less years on his sentence than Bollinger).

My wife, who has only been registered to vote in Arkansas for 7 years, has been called three times and sat on one jury... a rather notorious drug case in which the husband and wife both got 26 year sentences.  She was called in the pool right before me and then called again in the pool after me due to a mistake in the jury pool selection process (50+ others were also mistakenly selected) and was subsequently excused from the pool entirely.

Boingy

The jury I sat on, which Guetz just described, was pretty much stacked against the defendants from the start.  They were selling meth out of their home where they also had three children.  The jury included two social workers, a first grade teacher, a middle school nurse, and two grandparents raising their grandchildren because of the chronic drug habits of the parents of those grandchildren.  The verdict was a slam dunk.  Sentencing got more interesting when we learned that there was a federal law that added a 10 year sentence with no parole for selling or manufacturing an illegal drug within 1000 feet of a school, church, park or community center - which applied in this case.  It was interesting during the jury deliberations to hear the personal stories of other jurors whose lives had been affected by drug users. 

warriorsforever

  My pool of jurors had to report yesterday and I got selected AGAIN!!!
This time, it was a land condemnation suit, and, ever since my parents had about 10 acres condemned to build a road, I have issues with this.  Obviously, the lawyer figured this out in asking questions, amd he checked me off the list, so I got to go to the house.  I am now free for two years!

AlisaD1983

Quote from: Guetz on June 14, 2006, 07:56:05 am
Been registered to vote in Arkansas for 30 years.  Last year I was finally, for the first time ever, called for jury duty.  Of the 15 dates to report we only had to go in twice (besides the initial swearing in of the jury pool).  On the first date they were choosing a jury for a case that was related to a double homicide here in Booneville.  I was chosen in the first of 6 rounds of voir dire and ended up on the jury.

This young 19 year old kid had witnessed nearly a year and a half earlier the brutal and cold blooded stabbing death of two of his friends, one of whom was his roommate in a ramshackle rental house.  The kid was rather shy and unassuming, easily led. 

The crime was perpetrated by two 20-something guys with bad reputations for violence and other bad behaviors.  Drugs were involved.  The guy, Osborne, took the two victims in his car out to a deserted and dark gas well pad in late December 2004.  The other conspirator, Bollinger, involved with this premeditated homicide took Stone, the guy on trial, to the same location. 

Once at the pre-chosen murder site, Osborne segregated one of the two victims on the pretext of looking for a bag of drugs and then proceeded to stab him repeatedly in the back and then the front.  The other victim ran to help and Osborne took a slash at him, scaring him off to run into the woods near the old Booneville city water lake.  Osborne, out of site of the remaining two (the defendant and the co-conspirator), chased down and murdered the runner and then returned to stab the first victim some more since he was still moving a little. 

Meanwhile the co-conspirator was physically restraining the defendant, keeping him from running back to his car and driving away.  Osborne and Bollinger then threatened the defendant with death if he ever told anyone what had happened, implying that perhaps they ought to just kill him right then.  They kept him, against his rather small will, with them for several hours while they cleaned up and got their stories straight before letting him return to his home, alone. 

The defendant, Stone, was approached by the police about 3 weeks later after the police had been given missing person reports for the two victims (who by that time were frozen exactly as they fell in the woods north of Booneville) and begun to investigate.  Stone initially didn't say anything but a couple hours later had his boss take him to the police station where he told exactly what had occurred.  The police initially viewed Stone as another crime victim but then later changed their thinking and charged him with obstruction of justice for not reporting the crime (as a sidebar, there is no requirement in the law to report a crime) and viewed him as a co-conspirator rather than as a person just in the wrong place at the wrong time who had been thouroughly intimidated by the perpetrators.  They kept him in jail for nearly a year and a half before bringing him to trial on the obstruction charge. 

Our jury ended up hung with a vote of 11-1 with the single vote dissenting acquittal from a woman who took a hard-a$$ed view and said that the duress this rather mild-mannered kid was under should have only lasted a few hours and that he should have reported.  She claimed, from her experience as a HS counselor, that duress in the form of a threat of death could not possibly last three weeks.  The rest of us strongly disagreed.  Judge Danielson declared a mistrial after we had deliberated for several hours and were deadlocked beyond any chance for compromise.

Stone was held in jail for ANOTHER year, until this last February, before the charges against him were dropped subsequent to the life sentence convictions of Bollinger and Osborne (another sidebar, Osborne, the actual murderer with blood upon his hands, through a fluke of law, received less years on his sentence than Bollinger).

My wife, who has only been registered to vote in Arkansas for 7 years, has been called three times and sat on one jury... a rather notorious drug case in which the husband and wife both got 26 year sentences.  She was called in the pool right before me and then called again in the pool after me due to a mistake in the jury pool selection process (50+ others were also mistakenly selected) and was subsequently excused from the pool entirely.

This was my brother.  He was one of the boys who was murdered and left in the woods.

beach bum

Quote from: AlisaD1983 on October 30, 2017, 11:22:10 am
This was my brother.  He was one of the boys who was murdered and left in the woods.

That is absolutely horrible.... I am sorry for your loss, and for your family, and friends who knew him.

Kazimierz

Jury Duty is very important but the voir dire process (in state court) is such a circus. They even have attorneys who specialize in voir dire and only attend/work that portion of the trial.

Federal court is, in my opinion, much better. The questions are limited and the judges tend to exercise much more control over the attorneys.

Most of the time the attorneys are looking to select people with prejudices in their favor (i.e. anti-death penalty, or pro-punitive damages, etc.). Some attorneys just want the most easily manipulated individuals. And, although it can vary from court to court, and your experience may differ, many attorneys don't want people who are legally savvy.

The last jury I was involved in picking was: 8 White, 4 Black of that... 3 managerial types; 5 retired types; 4 entry/mid-level employees. Only 2-3 bachelor degree holders and no post-bachelor education.

So, do your civil duty and report... but just know that if you want to get out of jury duty... have some very hardline opinions. You'll probably get excused.


Lions84

I been excused because I am a Ordained Minister.

RTF

I have been selected for jury duty twice. I had to only show up once and was selected to be on that jury. The prosecution only asked me one question " Have you ever served on a jury before." The defense, also, only asked me one question "It says here you are still in College?" The answer was  NO on both ( First time ever served and I had just graduated College at that time) and I didn't get excused =( . It was  Residential burglary & Aggravated assault charges. I believe Court started at 8:00am and we did not finish till 7:30 - 8 PM.

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