Jury Duty Stories

[Dan Gould]

I am posting from the Palm Beach County Courthouse. My first Jury Duty notification since moving to PBC five years ago (I'd get called in for Broward Jury Duty all the damn time) - and I got empaneled on a criminal case. Pretty nice facilities here - four PCs with Internet, which is why I am able to post this, and they run movies on the video screen, which Broward definitely did not do.

Anyway .... since I am getting my first jury experience but can't talk about it til the Judge says its OK, I figured I'd ask about jury experience by other members, and once this is over (possibly today, more likely tomorrow, we only got through opening statements before lunch and it looks like the defense is going to put on more than a couple of witnesses to rebut the prosecution) I'll jump back in with my own (new) story.

In the meantime, talk amongst yourselves. I'll give you a topic: reasonable doubt - what does it mean in practice?

[papsrus]

I got called a few years ago. Once seated among the larger group, they would take small groups out of the room for questioning. They got their jury before my name was called, so that was it. Just sat around in a large room for half the day.

Someone did come out at one point to take some questions. It seemed to me at the time for some reason that some people who were summoned simply didn't show up. They weren't present when names were called, or something like that. So I asked, "What happens if you simply don't show up?"

Looking slightly nonplussed, the woman taking the quesitons responded that the judge "could" fine you or even hold you in contempt and order jail time, but that either option was unlikely. I surmised from this that people who had a certain degree of wealth might simply blow it off and pay the fine, should one be levied. The cost of doing business. Maybe even write it off on their taxes.

Edited July 7, 2009 by papsrus

[Kevin Bresnahan]

I've been called to jury duty 4 times. The first two were in Massachusetts and I didn't get on a jury. The last two times were in NH and in both cases, I got to sit on 2 juries. In NH, jury duty is for 4 weeks. You go in on Monday and see if you get on a jury for that week. If you don't, you go home until the next Monday. In 8 weeks, I only got into two juries.

One thing I will say about my time in these juries - I used to wonder how OJ's jury acquitted him. Now that I've sat on a few, I no longer wonder. OJ probably could've sued the Goldmans for lost revenue and won with the last group I was with. Several of my fellow jurists were complete morons. You can tell that they don't make you take an intelligence test to sit on a jury. It might be time to start.

[BillF]

I have never been called for jury service and after November, when I reach 70, I will no longer be eligible. I'm also told that over-65s have the right to refuse if called. This suits me fine. I don't think I could stand listening to a child abuse case, which seem very frequent in the courts nowadays. In England you can refuse if you have a good reason and work commitments are usually accepted. The result is that juries are disproportionately composed of unemployed and retired people and the legal profession is worried about the effect this has on verdicts.

[Spontooneous]

It helps to work for a newspaper. And then make sure the judge sees you chatting with your paper's courthouse reporter.

This has gotten me out of jury duty twice.

[Jazzmoose]

I've always thought sitting on a jury would be an interesting experience, but I've never made it through the selection process.

[papsrus]

I bet Dan's involved in some steroid trial.

[GA Russell]

Just last week I was emailed some jokes about the economy. "The economy is so bad that..."

One of them was, The highest paying job is jury duty!

A couple of others were:

I got a pre-declined credit card in the mail.

The bank returned my check marked "Insufficient Funds", and I had to call to ask them or me.

Edited July 7, 2009 by GA Russell

[Dave Garrett]

One thing I will say about my time in these juries - I used to wonder how OJ's jury acquitted him. Now that I've sat on a few, I no longer wonder. OJ probably could've sued the Goldmans for lost revenue and won with the last group I was with. Several of my fellow jurists were complete morons. You can tell that they don't make you take an intelligence test to sit on a jury. It might be time to start.

I had a similar experience. I've been called several times, but have only been selected once. Once we got into the jury room and began deliberations, I couldn't believe some of the things that my fellow jurors uttered. One particularly vociferous woman angrily insisted that she would never vote in favor of the plaintiff because he "just looked like he was lying", completely ignoring the fact that his case was quite strong against a defendant who had clearly been negligent. She also made other statements that were borderline racist (the plaintiff was black). I remember thinking that if this was a jury of our peers, we were all screwed.

[Royal Oak]

I got called just once, but was excused because I was studying at the time. I hope never to be called again. I have a vague recollection of some Laurel and Hardy film where the convicted man makes some non-verbal threat to kill L&H at the conclusion of the trial. No thanks.

[Dan Gould]

Well, in the end it was all over in just a few hours. Too bad so few have had occasion to serve, even in a fairly minor criminal case (I believe it was misdemeanor but more on that later) you ought to really appreciate the fact that your own interpretation of what "reasonable doubt" means is going to have an important impact on another human being.

Anyway - the simple facts of the case:

The storage shed of a trailer park community was locked at 6 PM and found broken into at 12 AM. Missing was a weed whacker, a hedge trimmer, and a battery charger for a golf cart. The battery charger was beaten up and quite distinctive - when charging, it made a very loud high pitched vibrating noise.

The next night, the security guard was on his rounds when he heard this very familiar sound from several houses away. He approached the house, where the owner came out to ask him if he knew anything about battery chargers and was there some way to make it work without the noise. Security guard asked him where he got it, he said that the previous night, around 7 PM or so, he had bought it from the defendant, whom he described as a longstanding friend. He testified that he had paid $50 or $75 dollars, and while the property report indicated that he said he purchased it at 10 PM, his testimony was that it was earlier, maybe as early as 6:30.

Security guard calls cops, he finds defendant. Defendant admits selling the charger to the homeowner. The security guard testified that he observed the Deputy Sheriff and the defendant speak, then they went off a distance away to an empty lot at the far eastern end of the property from which they returned, carrying a hedger and a weed whacker.

Now you might think that the charges would include burglary, but we were presented with a single charge, trafficking in stolen goods, specifically, the battery charger.

The two elements of the crime are:

Possession of the property in question;

Sale of the property which the accused knew or should have known was stolen.

So, its obvious the state has satisfied number one, but we haven't gotten any testimony on the state of mind of the defendant. In fact, we've gotten no testimony whatsoever about how he came to be in possession of the battery charger. His lawyer said in opening argument that he got it from a friend, who she named, but never called. Therefore, since the words of a lawyer don't constitute evidence, we have nothing from the defense about how he came to be in possession of the item. The defense rested without calling any witnesses. What the defense established during cross-examination (only three witnesses - the security guy, the guy who bought the battery charger and the deputy sheriff) was that the defendant never acted suspiciously or nervously, that none of the items had any markings on them indicating they were the property of the development, Whispering Pines, that he did not tell the buyer that it was stolen, and that there was an extensive network of buying/selling/bartering in this community throughout the time that the guy who bought the charger lived there.

Other important facts:

According to the buyer, he had told his friend that he needed a golf cart battery charger and his friend had previously stated that he had a friend or relative who had one, and he might be able to arrange a sale. (Pretty convenient, huh?)

So - has the State proved its case beyond and to the exclusion of all reasonable doubt?

For me, and eventually the rest of the Jury (there were two initial holdouts), there was a key part of the law that led us to conclude that he was guilty:

The law says that if you are in possession of recently stolen property without a satisfactory explanation for how you came to have the property, it may be inferred that you knew, or should have known, that the property was stolen.

Well - we can't even judge whether his explanation for having it is satisfactory or unsatisfactory, because the defense didn't offer any explanation!

Now, here is the contradiction that I see - the law says you can't hold it against the defendant if he doesn't testify. But the law says that you can infer that he knew or should have known if he doesn't offer a satisfactory explanation. In other words, his refusal to speak results in an inference that leads to a conclusion of guilt.

Another fact that worked against the defendant - let's assume that he simply found the items, and that's why he was able to lead the cop to their location. Well, why sell them? This is your friend, after all - why not just tell him, hey, I saw these over there, you said you needed a charger, I have no use for one. But no, he sold it to the guy, literally within hours of it having been taken out of the storage shed.

His lawyer claimed that no one would be stupid enough to sell the charger in the same community but if he didn't know in advance that it made such a racket, why not? He had a ready buyer for it once he took it.

So, bottom line - I hammered away at the part of the law that allowed the inference about state of mind, I already had three others on my side, the fifth guy came over quickly because he said that his feelings weren't strong enough if the majority felt the other way, and finally the sixth guy caved after I told him that we could go out and tell the judge we were hung, in which case she'd send us back to deliberate some more, or eventually we could tell the judge he wasn't deliberating in good faith so he could be removed and we'd start over with the alternate juror. I kept asking him about how he overcomes the law that says we may infer state of mind absent a "good explanation" and finally he just gave up and agreed to vote our way.

We all wondered though why this went to trial and whether or not this might be a "Three Strikes" type of case where he'd face some mandatory sentence because of his prior convictions (there were implications that he was "getting his life together" which certainly implies that he hadn't had his life together before). Some people wanted to know what the potential sentence might be, and whether we should ask the judge for leniency but I knew the judge wouldn't go for it, and we wouldn't agree on what would constitute leniency anyway. On the other hand, the woman in charge of the jury room had told us that they had nine misdemeanor cases, no mention of felony cases to try, so I didn't think it was going to be a three strikes sentence.

So - the moment of truth arrives, I was watching the defendant, and he gave a pretty emotional response, which made me wonder again whether the sentence was going to be pretty stiff, and I had doubts about the hold out when they polled the jury, but he wasn't concerned about his decision and affirmed his guilty verdict.

All in all, a very interesting experience. I'm comfortable with my verdict and I hope the two who had different opinions are comfortable with their change of mind as well.

[Kevin Bresnahan]

Dan, it seems like you want the particulars of cases so....

The first jury I sat on was a civil case for unlawful termination. In reality, it was about an assault by a supervisor on a lousy employee.

The scene:

Guy habitually late to work at a local newspaper and when working, sucks at it (testimony of supervisor/defendant). The guy comes in late, gets spoken to (yelled at?) rather harshly by the supervisor, so the guy pushes over a stack of papers and goes outside to have a smoke (testimony of plaintiff). The supervisor goes out to tell him he's fired (testimony of supervisor) but instead, proceeds to beat the hell out of the kid (testimony of plaintiff and witness).

This witness was clearly a surprise for the defendants (the supervisor and the newspaper company).

After the witness testified to a rather startled jury, there was an immediate call for a sidebar. The lawyers convened and the jury was sent to a back room to wait. After about 3 hours, we get the word that there was a settlement and our decision would not be needed. The judge was cool though - he asked us how we were leaning. We all agreed that the weight-lifter supervisor was at fault once he beat up the scrawny employee (although he did deserve it) so we would have ruled for the plaintiff. The judge said that they settled because that's the way they thought we would go.

We also asked the judge if we would have been able to get the supervisor into a court-mandated anger management class. The judge said sorry, can't happen. But he would forward our comments to the defendant's attorneys.

[Dan Gould]

Well yes, these are the sorts of things I was interested in hearing - what were the facts and the law and how did you deal with things like reasonable doubt (if a criminal case). I'd wonder why there was no police involvement - the guy beat the hell out of him, he didn't call a cop, to get an assault charge as well as documentation for a civil suit ...

[Kevin Bresnahan]

I'd wonder why there was no police involvement - the guy beat the hell out of him, he didn't call a cop, to get an assault charge as well as documentation for a civil suit ...

Unfortunately, as a juror, you can't ask anything - one of the more frustrating aspects of our judicial system. If the lawyers don't bring it up, you don't find out. In my particular case, I assume that the witness came forward at a later date and the guy who beat up the scawny kid was quite the bully (it come through loud and clear in his testimony) so he was probably able to convince the kid that calling the cops would be a bad idea. But that's supposition on my part. The lawyers didn't ask, so I'll never know.

BTW, during the 8 weeks of NH jury duty, I got called onto many juries, but I was kicked off for various reasons. It's easier to get kicked off a jury than it is to get on, so anyone who gets the call and doesn't want to serve, just go and give a plausible reason and you'll get booted.

One trial was a woman suing Dunkin' Donuts for serving her a hot coffee in her car that she spilled into her lap while driving down the road. When I got called up, I told the judge flat out that I have no sympathy for the plaintiff and that we often joked about the woman who sued McDonalds for the same thing - I could not be impartial. The judge thanked me for my honesty and took me off.

Kevin

[Dan Gould]

I realize that you don't find out what they don't want to bring out in testimony - like in my case, using the security guy to testify to the recovery of the other two items because he witnessed it, but he couldn't testify to the conversation that preceded it, and the Deputy wasn't going to be asked about it. We got intimations during Voir Dire that maybe there was a history between the deputy and the defendant - but you never knew it from her cross-examination, which did nothing to help the defendant except to establish he denied knowledge of the item being stolen. And while there was reference to a stolen property report, it was never entered into evidence, nor was any police report, so we never saw them, although we asked the judge for them. Like I said, there was a big hole in the narrative that the was formed by the testimony - how the defendant came to be in possession of the charger.

By the way, we joked after deliberations were over about who made the better impression in court - the Prosecutor, Dick Cheney (literally could have been his brother, and with the same low, rumbling voice) or Defense Counsel, Morticia (this was Bizarro World Morticia, because while she looked very much like the actress, had the same skin tone and hair, but was butt f-ing ugly).

[fasstrack]

They ain't got me yet. The trick: don't leave a paper trail. (No letters, just don't answer).

However, I feel eventually, like Huck Finn, I'll be run to ground.......

[Shawn]

I've always avoided, one benefit of moving around constantly for most of my life.

When i do get called, my only answer will be "FRY EM ALL!".

[fasstrack]

I've always avoided, one benefit of moving around constantly for most of my life.

When i do get called, my only answer will be "FRY EM ALL!".

That's too unhealthy. High cholesterol. Couldn't we "SAUTE EM ALL"?

[Dan Gould]

There were people in my jury pool that were clearly taking the approach of saying anything they could to get out. One guy was really lame - first he says that yes, he's been the victim of a burglary, so he doesn't know if he could be unbiased. Then when the prosecutor asked about holding him to the "reasonable doubt" standard or do you expect him to do more, this clown said he'd expect him to remove all doubt from his mind.

Sorry, but if you can't comprehend what reasonable doubt means and what the Constitution requires, you aren't much of a citizen. In fact you are worthless. Just say you've been robbed and you can't help but hold that against someone. But don't say you can't adhere to what the law says is the standard for conviction.

I admit I've said things that got me eliminated, but they were strongly held opinions. The question was whether I would hold it against the defendant if he had refused a breathalyzer test at the scene and was pleading not guilty to drunk driving. I told the defense attorney that as someone who doesn't drink, if I get pulled over and accused of drunk driving and they want a breathalyzer, my only question would be "how hard do I blow?" and absolutely I would want to know why he had refused (in FL, refusal results in an automatic license suspension, iirc). I peeked over the bailiff's shoulder and saw the list of potential jurors - I was the only name crossed out, so either they used a peremptory challenge or got rid of me for cause but they knew I wasn't going to look kindly on the defendant's actions.

[Drew Peacock]

In Massachusetts they have a 1 day or 1 trial rule and that you can only be called once every 3 years. I firmly believe that they use the registered voters list for the jury pool. If you don't register you're never called to duty.

I've been called three times but only once did the trial get to the point where they decided to bring the jury into the courtroom. I had to appear before the judge and the two trial attorneys. It was a domestic violence case but fortunately I was not one of the jurors picked to sit on this trial.

I have jury duty on Oct 8th of this year in the Roxbury court system. What fun. I'm bringing my iPod and am hoping to drown out the festivities that take place in the waiting room.

The rooms I've been in have been terrible. Plastic fold up chairs to sit on all day. No table or desk to lay out stuff. One or two outlets for the room so be first to plug in or go without. Yeech. Don't get me started on the other jurors....

[papsrus]

Just got a summons for jury duty Aug. 18th in the mail today. I doubt they'll select me because I work for the local newspaper, even though it's in the sports department. I've never really understood the rationale for rejecting media people. Too informed? Biased? Got the inside dope? What's the beef?

[Christiern]

Thank you, HBO

[Jazzmoose]

Just got a summons for jury duty Aug. 18th in the mail today. I doubt they'll select me because I work for the local newspaper, even though it's in the sports department. I've never really understood the rationale for rejecting media people. Too informed? Biased? Got the inside dope? What's the beef?

I think a combination of too informed/inside dope probably. From what I've read, anyone who brings any insight or knowledge of the issues in contention would make it past the selection process.

[Tim McG]

I realize that you don't find out what they don't want to bring out in testimony - like in my case, using the security guy to testify to the recovery of the other two items because he witnessed it, but he couldn't testify to the conversation that preceded it, and the Deputy wasn't going to be asked about it. We got intimations during Voir Dire that maybe there was a history between the deputy and the defendant - but you never knew it from her cross-examination, which did nothing to help the defendant except to establish he denied knowledge of the item being stolen. And while there was reference to a stolen property report, it was never entered into evidence, nor was any police report, so we never saw them, although we asked the judge for them. Like I said, there was a big hole in the narrative that the was formed by the testimony - how the defendant came to be in possession of the charger.

By the way, we joked after deliberations were over about who made the better impression in court - the Prosecutor, Dick Cheney (literally could have been his brother, and with the same low, rumbling voice) or Defense Counsel, Morticia (this was Bizarro World Morticia, because while she looked very much like the actress, had the same skin tone and hair, but was butt f-ing ugly).

I've been called to service more than twelve times in the last 25 years.

I have been selected five times and served on a jury through to fruition three times.

Except for the fact it has to be the biggest pain in the butt to get someone to cover for my classes, it is a very interesting adventure in some cases. I was even the foreman once.

Twelve Angry Men is a play I teach to my sophomores every year so the experiences come in pretty handy

Edited August 4, 2009 by GoodSpeak

[Ken Dryden]

I've been called four times. The first time, I was on commission-only income and my wife was in school, so I got out of it. I was on two panels the second time. A civil suit over a car wreck, though the plaintiffs got only a few hundred dollars apiece. The defense attorney had nothing to work with but convinced the other 11 on the panel that the plaintiff was speeding when the defendant turned in front of him. I didn't hang the case simply because they failed to document their lost income and they refused emergency room treatment (weird, as you always have to assume a concussion may have taken place in many such collisions). I knew the plaintiff (not well) but was still seated. I also was on a case where a woman accused her ex-husband of running her off the road, shattering her car window and beating her in the face. In spite of several witnesses for the defense, we convicted him, as they all seemed to be lying. If any of them had been third party vs. family and co-workers, it might have turned out differently.

The third time I was called, I was on an attempted first degree murder case. An ex-con was accused on shooting his girlfriend up the butt, causing horrendous injuries. She was the only one to testify, but the prosecution objected to the defense attorney's line of questioning, then stupidly asked for a mistrial (all of us would have ignored the claim of perjury against the victim, which was clearly bogus). As a result, double jeopardy took place and they were unable to retry him. He did get some time for federal gun charges, being an ex-con in possession. My feeling: the guy fired the shot, though whether we would have reached the requested verdict is impossible to guess. Any beginning attorney should have known better than to ask for a mistrial, according to my lawyer friends. I also served on a drunk driving case, where the appointed attorney convinced 7 jurors that the defendant wrecked his car while sober, called the police after failing to get anyone to tow him, then went across the street to a bar for a few beers while awaiting them. All because the office never touched the hood of the car to see if the engine was still warm, as the defendant claimed.

I still have a few weeks to go on Federal jury duty right now, though the two times I was contacted, the cases settled or were postponed before I had to show up.