The lawyers in the courtroom where I was assigned today managed to pick a jury of 14 (12 regular jurors plus 2 alternates) from the first 21 candidates, so I didn’t even participate in voir dire, thank Nephi.
I thought the whole thing went very smoothly, and it was clear that the bureaucrats involved were making the best effort they could, within the constraints of the justice system, to make jury service as painless as possible. That said, any contact with a random sampling of the general public means that you’re going to deal with a few assholes.
For example, while we were sitting around waiting to be assigned, some spry retired guy was complaining about how long the process was taking, and how he could tell this was a government operation. Uncharacteristically, I didn’t ask him what the fuck else he had to do that day, and how many tax increases he would tolerate to turn our experience into something more like a trip to his favorite destination, which judging from his attire I would wager is Sam’s Club. But, really, how much goddam insight does it take to realize that you, the juror, are probably the least important part of anything that goes on in the court building? I was just happy that they had decided to give us moochers and looters wi-fi and that the toilets were working.
Other than that, I spent most of the time thinking about the defendant, who was a good-looking 21 year-old kid with a winning smile, which I assume will be much less in evidence after he spends some time in Attica. What a goddam shame and a waste.
Spiffy McBang
What was the charge against the kid? Attica’s a supermax, and I wonder what he could have been charged with that didn’t leave him looking dead-eyed or scared as shit that would put him in a place like that.
raven
“the juror, are probably the least important part of anything that goes on in the court building”
Wow, I disagree totally’ It’s one of the most important functions we can participate in a citizen. The process can be clumsy and outdated but it is vital. I’ve been on a jury that let a guy off that was guilty according to the letter of the law and I’ve been on one that gave a guy 150 plus life and he deserved every second of it.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
Heh. Not true at my courthouse. Jurors are treated like gold there.
Spiffy McBang
@raven: The jury is critical. Any specific juror is not. IMO.
raven
@Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again): I wrote about it this morning but here in Athens-Clarke county they have really strict rules prevent jurors, perspective and alternates from having any sort of electronic devices or reading materials. As an alternate my wife was basically locked in a room by herself with nothing for 2 weeks.
KG
I’ve had the opportunity to do jury duty twice since passing the bar and practicing. I’ve found most attorneys don’t want another attorney on the panel, so I’ve been graciously excused both times I got called into the box and they asked me what my occupation was and if I had any connections to the court. It’s a good reminder for attorneys what jury members go through.
As for the old guy, what a lot of people don’t realize is that there’s a lot of other stuff that goes on besides selecting the jury. Some judges do motions in limine before jury selection, some after. Other have regular motion hearings in the morning and then trials/jury selection in the afternoon. Sometimes, they’ll pull the parties into chambers and try and get them to settle. All of these are reasons why you might get called for jury duty and then spend your entire day in the waiting room without ever getting called.
raven
@Spiffy McBang: You’ll have to explain that a little better.
t4toby
that there is a nice turn of a phrase…
scav
@raven: Two statements are not in conflict. In terms of organizing the process, jurors ain’t and shouldn’t be the center, stars, pivot of attention etcetera etcetera. Their role in the process is critical, but it’s [the trial] not organized for their amusement and all-embracing comfort. Although it’s certainly a nice-to-have if they treat all members of the process well.
ETA a bit for clarity.
jl
You did not perform a private police action on him?
Soshulism has sapped the initiative of this dependent enslaved population. We can’t even get a real private enterprise government off the ground with mooks like mistermix.
We are doomed. I will comment about it on Cole’s Balloon-Juice After Dark.
Warren Terra
@Spiffy McBang:
I’d also be interested to hear more about the case – a bit more, consistent with confidentiality; just whether they were charged with a violent crime or a property crime, that sort of thing.
David in NY
Isn’t the wi-fi teh best? I’ve never really been close to being called in Brooklyn, but over the years it seems to me they’ve done their damnedest to make it as easy for jurors as it can be, under the circumstances.
But there are the whiners who can only think of themselves. I actually know one who maneuvered so outrageously to get out of serving that the presiding judge (a fearsome former colleague of mine) held her in “detention” until the trial was over. Legal? I dunno, but doubtless deserved.
22over7
@jl:
We need to get Cole a smoking jacket and fez for that.
? Martin
@raven: Well, in terms of the workflow of a courtroom, he’s right. Trials aren’t going to be held up because jurors need to wait. The constraints on an efficient courtroom are the judges and lawyers. The jurors are summoned in sufficient numbers and with no competing obligations that when a courtroom needs them, they’re ready to go.
Now, once a jury is seated, their role and importance increases substantially.
raven
@KG: I can never figure out why I get picked and I almost always do. I know all kinds of public defenders and other lawyers but they still choose me. As far as the statement by Spiffy. On the rape trial I was on I had to convince the other people that the dude’s 8 year gap in his record was because he was in the fucking joint. I consider myself pretty progressive but after the testimony.I was sure this guy was guilty as shit. When I read his record in the paper after the trial I was right. I know defense lawyers don’t like “similar transaction” testimony but this guy had nearly killed the one woman that fought back and raped at least four others. Maybe I wasn’t the one who turned the jury but I’m glad I was there.
raven
@? Martin: OK but that doesn’t mean “Any specific juror is not.”
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@raven: Hear, hear. Thank you, mistermix, for your service. It always troubled me when I practiced criminal law, how proud so many people were of their ability to evade jury duty. And I was (almost) always impressed with how seriously jurors took their service. So while your comfort as a juror may be low on the list of priorities, most in the courthouse would consider you an important part of the system and process.
raven
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): Maybe it helps that I was on the other side of the process a few times.
? Martin
@KG:
Yeah, I got picked for a California Superior Court jury a number of years ago. We were picked near the end of the day and told to report to courtroom such and such the following day at 9AM or some so. It was a pretty high profile case, would take anywhere from 30-90 days. Working for the state, my employer would cover me, so I’m in like it or not. We reported to the huge courtroom and they left us outside in the hallway for maybe half an hour, then told us to go downstairs to the jury room to wait. A few hours later approached and a bailiff told us to go to lunch and report to the courtroom again after lunch. We all did, and about 10 minutes later the bailiff came out and said we weren’t needed. Word was the guy pled out.
That was a whole day, even after being called, of doing nothing while lawyers did lawyer things. Nobody minded – it beat going to court every day for a month or more.
Higgs Boson's Mate
Here in the Golden State our courts are so strapped for cash that they’ve had to cut back their hours and staff. Last time I was summoned for jury duty the amenities consisted of chairs and a couple of tired sofas. Not the court’s fault, there just isn’t any money. Hopefully, Governor Brown’s Prop. 30 will pass and we’ll be able to avoid further cuts.
JWL
My two most entertaining jury duty moments:
A flamboyantly dressed hooker with a huge, rainbow colored afro was asked by The Judge, “Miss Smith, did you testify before this court in a separate trial last week”? To which she responded, in an annoyed and aggressive voice, “Yeah”. The judge then politely excused her from further duty.
The second incident happened the same day. An ancient looking Chinese American was represented by his granddaughter, who asked the same judge to excuse her grandfather, because he had difficulty understanding English. The judge asked how long he had been in the country, to which she replied (something like), “72 years”. The judge simply said, “Tell him to stick around. He’s not excused”.
mistermix
@raven: I should have said “potential juror” – it’s a cattle call until you’re picked. Once you’re on the jury, you’re precious. There are only 2 alternates.
? Martin
@raven: Yeah, I didn’t respond to that. Not sure where he was going. But I think that catering to 1000 individual potential jurors has to be lowest on the list of people the court system needs to cater to – with the parties and lawyers much higher on the list. I mean, it’d be nice if the court system could include me on setting what days/times would work best in my scheduled for each individual trial, but talk about shit never getting done…
But all of the courts I’ve been called for jury duty in (5 maybe) they were all pretty good to the jurors. They were among the first public places to get WiFi. There’s always free shitty coffee, and less shitty coffee 100 feet away, books and newspapers to borrow, etc. They’re pretty organized. So much so I’d rather do the sit in the waiting room for a day than be on call for a week or more.
Penty
I served on a Grand Jury a couple years ago, that was an interesting experience. It is a lot easier to decide if there is a reasonable chance the defendant is guilty over are they guilty.
wonkie
I made it to voir dire but no farther twice. Once I gave the wrong answer to “Do you think children smetimes lie about abuse?”. The second time I was dropped because I said that I thought it was an implicit threat for someone to go on to someone else’s property with a pistol in their hand.
I’m kind of glad that I wasn’t on the first jury as it was about sex abuse and apparently hinged on the testimony of a two year old.
Steve
It was a drug case, right? It’s always a drug case.
PurpleGirl
@KG: I began doing jury duty when I was a paralegal. That didn’t get me off of panels. However, I was let off one civil case — a slip and fall liability suit — because I mentioned that I had previously worked for Matthew Bender in the Trial and Evidence group. Both of attorneys looked at the judge and he asked me if I thought I knew more than the average person about rules of evidence. I told him, yes, I do. (I specifically copyedited books on evidence.) And the judge dismissed me from the panel.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@raven: You are exactly the kind of juror I’d have wanted in a criminal trial, no matter which side of the room I was on. If I’d been trying a “letter of the law” case because I’d been somehow constrained from working it our fairly, I’d want you to make it right. And if I were defending a client who did it, I’d want the jury to do the right thing in spite of me.
I’m not sure how I’d feel about you in voir dire for a civil case. I would probably suspect that the trial subject matter would bore you.
? Martin
@Higgs Boson’s Mate: Well, hopefully they won’t spend the money on the jurors. It can take over a year to get a hearing on custody cases here in the state. That’s just unacceptable.
But I guess the shitty coffee is gone. It’s been a few years since I’ve been called. Used to get called up every year like clockwork.
J R in WV
@raven:
Congratulations on the hard work it no doubt took to bring other jurors into the real world. I had to deal with a juror who was on a jury years before and voted to acquit, only to discover later that the defendent was probably guilty of that offence, as he was convicted or pled guilty to tons of identical crimes. He decided then to never vote to acquit another defendant.
It was 11 to 1 for HOURS before we managed to convince him that this trial wasn’t that trial. Fortunately the argument that 11 out of 12 already thought that the defendant wasn’t guilty “beyond a reasonable doubt” meant that there was lots of reasonable doubt available, as we were all reasonable people. So he should try a helping of doubt and see how it tasted.
Got home 11:55 pm on my birthday! Whee!
Jury is hard! And anyone who hasn’t done a trial should be quiet about how hard it is. And people who lie to get out of the job are non-citizens in my book.
JoyfulA
@KG: Ha! My husband’s a former public defender in another state. When he was called for jury duty, he was certain he’d be home in half an hour. Was he wrong! He was empaneled on the first jury for attempted murder and managed to draw out deliberation for extra two days to examine each and every possibility. And had PTSD for a couple of weeks.
PurpleGirl
@David in NY: I’ve been called several times in Queens County and have seen various changes in the jury waiting room and in comfort levels. They really are trying to make it easier and more comfortable. I’ve even been allowed to bring in crocheting with me.
Gin & Tonic
Huh, I’ve been voting for 40 years and have lived in my current residence for over 25, and I’ve been called for jury duty precisely once (and excused after two days of sitting around.)
mistermix
@Steve: No, armed robbery. No mention of drugs in the indictment.
MikeJ
@mistermix: If we just legalized it we wouldn’t have these cases tying up the justice system.
MattF
@wonkie: Yeah, I was called for jury duty for a sex-abuse case, but thankfully wasn’t selected. What startled me was that there were a group of spectators in the courtroom, just eatin’ it all up. I know they had every right to be there… but yikes.
gbear
The only time I’ve done jury duty was for a guy accused of stealing CD players from the Ford plant in St. Paul. Two guys who worked at the plant were involved, but one of them had relatives in high places at the Ford plant so he got off by turning evidence against the guy who was on trial. The asshole who was getting off had unauthorized uniforms (from other areas of the Ford plant) and tools that were not part of his work set in his locker (most likely stolen). He was a total slimeball on the stand and when it came to deliberating the case, we all wanted to convict the witness instead of the guy on trial.
There was a video of the guys trying to remove the CD players so we had to convict, but it felt really shitty to convict a guy who’d worked at the plant for over 20 years and probably got talked into the scheme by the asshole witness.
Vico
I have a sister who didn’t vote for years because she heard courts took jury lists from registered voter rolls. Then she started getting called for jury duty because she has a driver’s license. So she started voting.
lao
Longtime reader/Lurker, first time commentor here. As a criminal defense attorney in NYC, I gotta say jurors are definitely the most important people in the courthouse. Personally, they all scare the crap out of me! Everything we do during a trial is geared towards not upsetting jurors, to the point it sometimes hurts defendants.
Walker
As someone with a PhD, I have been eliminated from almost every voir dire that I have sat through.
The one time I was not eliminated was interesting. Guy was demanding a jury trial for a $50 “not wearing seat belt” ticket. They tried to get him to settle, and he refused. He represented himself and picked his own jury.
His defense was a sovereign citizen defense. And I got selected jury foreman because I actually knew what he was talking about (unlike the rest of the jury). We fined him for the damn ticket.
Spaghetti Lee
I got called once, didn’t get seated. I think I offended the defense attorney, but who knows? Honestly, if I was being prosecuted, I wouldn’t trust me to by my own juror, so maybe for the best.
raven
@JoyfulA: The rape trial I was on was agonizing. Six and seven year old kids opened the screen door for the guy, they knew him, and he raped their mother. They put these kids on the stand and it was as awful a thing as I had ever seen and I’ve seen some awful shit.
RoonieRoo
I’ve never been called for jury duty. Ever. I’m 46! I just have to wonder if I have some black mark by my name.
raven
@Walker: A doctorate hasn’t gotten me off of the last three I was called for but maybe that’s because an Ed D is a “practitioners” degree!
sing a little bit of them
workin man blues. . .
scott (the other one)
I’ve been called for jury duty twice in the past few years here in San Diego county. Both times I, and all the other jurors, were excused before noon. This most recent time, after we watched the explanatory video, a judge came and explained how important juries were. Among other things, he said, just knowing that jurors are downstairs waiting for a trial suddenly convinces one or both parties that settling is in their best interests, so that even by never actually stepping into a courtroom we’re providing a service.
JWL
@PurpleGirl: “I’ve even been allowed to bring in crocheting with me”.
Brilliant. That’s a foolproof “get out of jury duty” pass. As you crochet, just cackle over and over, “Guillotine”. You can’t miss.
Spaghetti Lee
Maybe if R/R win, we can have trial by a jury of one’s economic peers!
“Your honor, we believe Mr. Worthington didn’t bludgeon his maid to death because that sort of thing simply isn’t done in polite society. I mean, what would the neighbors think? It’s really more an underclass sort of crime. You should find one of them to charge. Anyway, not guilty.”
Pen
Congratulations on doing your civic duty, but consider me one of those “non-citizens” who would look for a way to loophole the hell out of the system to avoid it myself. Why? Simple, I’m the primary breadwinner in my family and getting paid $16/day just doesn’t cut if the trial lasts more than a day. My employer is a soulless entity who would fire me for attending if they could get away with it so they sure as heck won’t pay me if I’m not at work.
When my duty to ensuring my family’s financial well-being goes up against my ‘civic duty’ I’m sorry, my family comes first.
Comradde PhysioProffe
My funny jury room story: Some pompous douchebagge with a bluetooth earpiece in his ear was prancing around gesticulating and shouting into his phone while carrying a cup of coffee. I needed to go use the bathroom, and I saw this pricke and did my best to keep my distance, but the motherfucker wandered right into me, spilled his goddamn coffee all over my cell phone and killed it.
RSR
Two decades ago, Philadelphia had such a huge problem getting jurors to respond to the summons and show up, that a massive campaign was implemented to find and fine the scofflaws. Bench warrants, 4AM raids with tons of media for the perp walks, etc.
The interesting part was that they figured out at the same time that making the experience of being a juror less hellish was probably a good idea too. A new facility was opened for the courts, with spartan but modern amenities. And the fines from the scofflaws were turned around and used to provide a continental breakfast in the main jury gathering room.
Now they even make it simple to postpone your first summons, although you cannot put it off indefinitely. Jurors are allowed electronic devices…although they are strongly encouraged to turn them off when the judge is in chambers. Jurors also get good service and even discounts at the Reading Terminal Market next door.
The crackdown on the scofflaws and the better treatment of the jurors has been so successful that the fines no longer provide enough cash flow for the breakfast anymore.
Personally, I’ve been empanelled once, but the (civil) case settled during lunch after the plantiff’s pretty poor performance on the stand.
I’ve been through voir dire a few other times, but not selected.
Most recently I was in the pool for Grand Jury duty, which, if selected, would have met twice a week for 18-24 months! I was intrigued, but also relieved I wasn’t selected.
Uncle Cosmo
@David in NY:
I’ve been called for one-day-or-one-trial jury duty roughly every 18 months since I moved into Baltimore City in 1980, & I’ve only served on one jury. It’s never taken much maneuvering: I show up in a dress shirt & tie & the defense attorney (whose client was usually some combination of young, lower class, & black) would take one look at my white old-guy-professional demeanor & see his worst nightmare. It was as if someone had written PEREMPTORY CHALLENGE across my forehead in invisible-except-to-lawyers ink.
The one time I did serve–well, let me tell the story in a separate post.
ImJohnGalt
Completely OT: I’m currently cycling with my spousal unit from Phnom Penh, Cambodia to Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam, and it’s amazing how even the crappiest guesthouse has WiFi. Thank you all for keeping me up on what’s happening back there. I know they say it’s great to unplug, but if I had to wait two weeks to find out how the debates went, it’d kill me.
raven
@Uncle Cosmo: 5&10 in Woolworth?
Less Popular Tim
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q):
This. I’ve never been called for jury duty, but if I were, especially for a civil trial, I would feel obligated to tell the court during voir dire “No disrespect, and I’ll try my best, but there is no way I’ll be able to stay awake for the entire thing. I’ll be attentive for probably 70% of the time, tops.” I always expect trials to be more interesting than depositions, but they’re not really much more stimulating.
raven
@ImJohnGalt: You going through Can Tho, Vihn Long? Say hi.
Spiffy McBang
@raven: And I’m back… I think MM explained it best. I drew the line between “jury” and “juror”, but I was thinking more in his terms of “potential juror” and “part of an actual jury”. No individual is particularly important because a jury can have any individual on it, but the jury itself is obviously critical.
mdblanche
@Gin & Tonic: You’re in RI, right? My mother was voting and living at the same address in North Providence for roughly the same lengths of time before receiving her first summons. Now she’s pretty much summoned again as soon as she’s eligible after the last time.
PurpleGirl
@Vico: I voted for 20+ years without being called for jury duty. Once I got a Non-Driver ID card from NYS DMV, I began being called for jury duty.
ImJohnGalt
Raven, as it turns out, our day 3 stop is in Can Tho at the Ninh Kieu II hotel. It’s been pretty awesome, but we’re only through day one and my quads are on fire.
Southern Beale
My mother drilled into me from a very young age that there are TWO things that make a good citizen: jury duty and voting. When I turned 18 she made a little celebration out of the first time I could legally vote, greeting me with a cupcake with an American flag on it. It was kinda cute. And she was in the pool to be selected for the OJ trial (she didn’t get picked, ultimately), so there was such big excitement over that at our house that I always had the idea that jury duty was a fun, cool thing to do.
I’ve only been asked twice, and only been picked for an actual trial once. Very mundane and boring. Stupid redneck crime, actually. BUT the whole thing took maybe 3 days and I remembered my mother the whole time. I felt like a good citizen.
So good for everyone who does jury duty and doesn’t try to get out of it.
sophronia
I had a fun experience a few years ago where I was chosen for a jury, we all showed up on the appointed day and were in the courtroom and ready to go when the judge suddenly informed us that we all needed to wait in the hall for a while. After about an hour we were dismissed without any explanation. I figured they had settled. But I read the next day in the newspaper that the case had to be delayed because the defense attorney, who looked and sounded like a lost Soprano brother, was about to be arrested for supplying drugs to local prison inmates.
Linda Featheringill
Trials are usually government operations. Everywhere.
Kangaroo courts, on the other hand . . .
Uncle Cosmo
The one time I did serve, a handgun-possession case, I was the 12th & last juror selected–the defense had just run out of peremptory challenges. (It was also 3:45 PM, 15 minutes short of dismissal time, & I was so visibly pissed at not only failing to dodge the bullet* but having to come back the next day for the trial that the judge threatened to hold me in contempt.)
In hindsight, I wouldn’t have missed the festivities for the world.
The trial itself wrapped up late the next morning, & we retired to deliberate while the judge & principals toodled off to lunch. It took all of 20 minutes for our (fairly evenly divided by race & gender) jury to find the defendant guilty. While the bailiff went off to reassemble the rest of the cast, the foreman & a couple of younger jurors (all white males), using one of their number’s pocket tool, set about disassembling the Beretta 9mm held in evidence out of pure curiosity. When the bailiff returned to give us a heads-up, they carefully put the gun back together.
A couple of minutes afterwards we were called out of the jury room. I was right behind the foreman, who was carrying the Beretta in his palm when, about 10 feet short of the door, the gun disintegrated. Literally. One of the screws hadn’t been tightened enough & the internal springs cut loose & slung pieces over hell & half of Balmer.
A minute or two later the bailiff stuck his head in wondering what the holdup* was. A half-dozen of us were on hands & knees scrabbling to dig chunks of black metal out of the brown carpet of the dimly-lit jury room. Stall them, the foreman said.
In a couple more minutes & we’d recovered the fragments & hurriedly reassembled them–with, you guessed it, several pieces left over. (I can still see the 3″ spring attached to a small plate that faute de mieux ended up sticking out of the muzzle.)
Exiting the jury room, the foreman turned & handed it to the state policeman who was serving as sergeant-at-arms. He stared down at the wreckage & said, What the hell did you do to this??
We’re not sure, the foreman replied, but we sure hope you can undo it.
Worth the price of admission, for sure…
– – –
(* Puns unintended…but I will accept the awards on behalf of my subconscious…)
Less Popular Tim
@Pen:
I’m certainly sympathetic to this. I mean, sure it’s in the Constitution and all, but being on jury duty can cause a great deal of psychic and financial hardship. It’s particularly galling to me when it’s a civil matter — a bunch of citizens are forced by the parties (backed by the authority of the government) to give up days or even weeks of their lives to listen to the petty squabble beween the parties, or decide a case that should have been settled, if brought at all.
But on the other hand, I think jury awards are an important bulwark against corporate irresponsibility.
MikeJ
@Less Popular Tim:
I think there are lawyers that would be clamoring to get you on the jury.
Scamp Dog
I would up serving on jury a while back, which I wrote up in a comment on this very blog! I had kind of hoped to get asked if I believe that cops lie on the stand, since I’ve been told that answering yes (the correct answer if you read newspaper articles, BTW) will get you out of serving. Having a PhD didn’t get me out of serving, either, @Walker.
So @Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again): are you the judge, some other court official, or are you just referring to your community’s courthouse?
Pen
@Less Popular Tim: it does at that, me I feel terrible for taking the stance I have, but ultimately I have a family to consider first. The fact that that’s even an argument is a major condemnation of the American jury system in general. The least they could have done is index the pay to inflation, but they don’t.
Uncle Cosmo
Speaking of courtly matters, there is this reported in GOS: Federal judge smacks down challenge to Obama administration’s birth control insurance coverage rule
The money quote (literally!) on the decision:
PurpleGirl
@Uncle Cosmo: Did the state this case happened in provide lunch to juries which were deliberating?
One case in which I actually served began deliberations right before lunch. We took a preliminary count and came to a not guilty/no liability decision. We were about to call in the bailiff when one juror said, “NYS pays for lunch if you are deliberating at lunch time.” We asked for menus, ordered lunch, ate and then did a real discussion of the facts of the case. We still came to not guilty/no liability and called in the bailiff.
John PM
I got callef for jury duty 6 years ago when my wife was getting ready to deliver our third son. I had been practicing for two years. The woman in front of me could not speak English. The person in charge started acting rudely and asking the woman improper questions. I told the supervisor that he was out of line and potentially violating the woman’s civil right. The guy was so freaked that he released the woman and me from jury duty. I also receivef high fives from two court employees on the way out. I have not received a jury summons since…
shortstop
So delicious.
I’ve never minded the hurry-up-and-wait aspect of jury duty, EXCEPT that it takes them so long to get started in the morning. It’s always at least a two-hour wait before the first group of prospective jurors gets called from the holding pen to the courtroom. Seems they might be able to adjust the beginning of the day, if nothing else.
shortstop
@Pen: Ugh. Don’t vote, then. There are a hell of a lot of “primary breadwinners” who recognize that citizenship comes with some sacrifice.
Apsalar
I’ve been called twice. The first time the judge was sick, so we were all dismissed. The second time I was chosen for a civil case involving some people who bought a house that had some problems that weren’t disclosed. The buyers were idiots and the sellers were sleazy. The jury determined the sellers should pay the buyers around $3000 for repairs, but I never found out what the judge actually awarded them.
Pen
@shortstop: fuck you. I would hardly call being forced into a situation that results in my potentially losing my house and means of transport, let alone ability to read my fucking child, to be “some sacrifice”. I’m in a situation where my family lives paycheck to paycheck. We hopefully won’t always be this strapped, but for now we are. If assholes like you can’t accept the financial reality of someone who can’t fucking miss work you obviously don’t understand what it means to be part of the working poor.
Pen
@shortstop: fuck you. I would hardly call being forced into a situation that results in my potentially losing my house and means of transport, let alone ability to feed my fucking child, to be “some sacrifice”. I’m in a situation where my family lives paycheck to paycheck. We hopefully won’t always be this strapped, but for now we are. If assholes like you can’t accept the financial reality of someone who can’t fucking miss work you obviously don’t understand what it means to be part of the working poor.
raven
@ImJohnGalt: Guess you’ll have to ride over that bridge. Wasn’t there when I was there!
shortstop
@Pen: I do understand. And I do see plenty of working poor who don’t own houses or cars fulfilling their jury duty. You don’t have to live up to your end of the civic contract — it’s your choice. But if you won’t, don’t vote.
Drew
@shortstop:
Nice anecdata! You are obviously speaking from a position of relative economic privilege, you smug fuck.
Uncle Cosmo
@PurpleGirl: I believe this was the Circuit Court for Baltimore City (which is a county-level independent jurisdiction) & I don’t think the City was providing grub. In fairness, we got the case a little before 11 AM IIRC, & it never occurred to any of us to ask–too early. (The two sides probably went for a cuppa joe while awaiting the verdict.)
shortstop
@Drew: I might be. Or I might be poor as a church mouse and recognize that a lot of the people sitting in jury holding rooms are even poorer.
Another Halocene Human
@shortstop: Yeah, but poor-with-a-check can afford to come out there. They even get free meals! Which is not Pen’s situation.
However, Pen should know that if you get called by Federal jury they pay your travel costs which means you can get paaaaaaaaaid. Depending on how you work that thing.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@Scamp Dog:
I’m one of the people who keeps the building clean and operable. :D
I’ve pulled jury duty once, too. Like Martin’s jury duty experience (somewhere above), there was plenty to read, food and coffee close (I brought my own, though). I was there for one day, went upstairs for selection (didn’t get picked), got downstairs about 2 minutes after the morning session ended, so I got paid for the full day. My only complaint was that the chairs in the jury assembly room are very uncomfortable.
Ruckus
@shortstop:
I guess you never had to worry about eating or feeding your family. That is instead of eating yourself.
Or keeping a roof over your head so all five of you don’t have to sleep in the car and crap in the bushes because the gas station won’t give you the key to the restroom unless you purchase something, which of course you can’t do because you spent it all on food.
Must be nice to be a sanctimonious prick, I think I’ll see if mittshit will let you join the club. They have monogrammed members only jackets and everything.
shortstop
@Ruckus: Right, not only have I never had to worry about money; I actually harvest the organs of low-income children for Friday night poker cash. Sometimes I don’t make the game, though, because I’m late closing up my payday loan store and have to make my weekly threat to call the INS on my household staff if they don’t agree to work for a quarter a day. All this stuff eats up time.
Look, your comment, like Pen’s comments, doesn’t address the point that there are plenty of people serving on juries who can’t afford to lose pay. They do it because they think it’s important, not because their financial need is smaller than Pen’s. As I’ve said above, Pen’s entitled to the opinion that other people should be responsible for keeping our citizen jury system going, but he/she goes beyond that in insisting on universal validation for that choice. Nope. He/she pretty much gave the game away when he started with a contemptuous “Congratulations on fulfilling your civic duty”…with civic duty in quotation marks.
ImJohnGalt
@raven: @raven: Oh! I misunderstood! I thought I was going to be saying hi to you! I’ll give it a nod on your behalf.
Drew
Anyway your point is still sanctimonious idiocy. Most jurisdictions will let you off if you explain economic hardship. The trouble is a lot of time you have to actually go in for one day to establish that. If the law in many places can recognize that, what the fuck is your excuse?
Sloegin
Washington state in the 1950s set jury pay at (what was back then) minimum wage. They haven’t upped it in over sixty years. Last year I was on a jury 5 weeks getting an average of $8 per day (we had duty half-days on Fridays and didn’t get paid those half-days).
Civic virtue is great and all, but having juries of only people who can afford doing it? Not a good thing for society. The states have really dropped the ball on meeting costs even a tiny bit.