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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Fartmaxxing.
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.
Your fellow jurors are suffering enough, why do you have to make it worse?
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?
I thought being on a jury might be quite interesting, until I found out you don’t get paid for it. Fuck that, I’m not working for free.
Last time I went they paid like $25 for the entire day.
That would barely cover your costs to be there.
That’s why they call it a civic duty, not a job.
Employers should have to give you paid time off for it
Some do
You get paid where I live, but it’s some useless amount like $12/day.
that is effectively not getting paid imo
I got bills to pay. I’m not living a lavish life. either it matches my income, or I find a way out of it
I got summoned recently and was excited. Ever8I worked with seemed odd that I was excited. The guy took a deal so they dismissed us around 11-12.
The court wrote a small check but I got a full pay day from my job. Union benefits for the win.
Especially if the trial is 20, 30, 40 weeks long
But the hours are good.
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.
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.
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.
And an ipa
And some asparagus for that reeky pee
My relative said he would never get culled as a juror, because he was an activist lawyer. Actually he was a lawyer for a local city government and he helped shape all the changes for a region and after he retired from the city, he represented local cops who had fucked up real bad
So get a law degree if you want to get out if jury duty
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
“OMG DELICIOUSSSSSS!!!”
