<p>Well, I just spent all day yesterday hanging around a jury lounge since I was required, under penalty of law, to attend. I had to show up by 8am, the first jury pool (50 people for one case) was called around 10:30am followed by a second one (45 people). I wasn’t called to those but was called to one (among 45 people) at 11:45 so they told us to report to a particular coutroom after lunch at 1:30 (the only people I know who have an hour and a half lunch period). So I kill time for almost 2 hours and then go hang out in the hallway with the other 44 people for about 45 minutes when they told us to return to the jury room while they decide if there’ll be a plea bargain or not. So I return to the jury room and hang around there while the plea’s being discussed until 3pm when they finally told us a plea bargain was reached and we could go home. </p>
<p>The end result is that I had to waste a day and not even actually serve on a jury all because some idiot criminal decided to break the law or because somebody decided they were going to file a civil lawsuit against someone (one of these in the past was some lady who slipped on a spilled drink at a mall so was suing the mall - if she’d have watched where she was walking I and 44 others wouldn’t have had to waste our day). That criminal or that civil litigator caused about 200 people to have to waste their entire day.</p>
<p>I think we need a more efficient system. I say we should do the following - </p>
<ul>
<li><p>Have many of the lower level cases, especially civil ones, judged by a pool of judges or professional jurists. </p></li>
<li><p>Eliminate the jurist ejection by lawyers option. This would reduce the ‘panel pool’ form say 50 to more like 15 to 20 and would reduce the tweaking and bias of the actual jury which often ends up to be not so random at all.</p></li>
<li><p>Require that if there’s a jury court date officially set, that’s it - it’s going forward and it’s too late for last second pleas/settlements (while the panel’s standing in the hallway). let them do their plea bargaining and settlement bargaining before without impacting potential jurists.</p></li>
<li><p>If the above were done the number of people called to jury duty would be decreased substantially, it would boost productivity of the nation and reduce the burden on employers since those people could now be at work, would reduce the cost to the government (and my taxes) by not having to pay the jurists their paltry entitlement, and would allow those called to feel as if they actually served a useful purpose other than as a seat warmer.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>Well, I had a decent book but it’s not my preferred reading location and I’d have much rather been working. It doesn’t help that they don’t have wireless access - only a few modem lines (they claim ‘due to security’ which is hogwash).</p>
<p>uc_dad: I went to jury duty six times before I even got sent to a courtroom as part of a selection panel. That seventh time, I was put on the jury. I was outraged, until I found out that there were two or three people on the jury who were even more inappropriate for it than I. (This was a medical malpractice case. The jury included, without considering me: an administrative assistant from the biggest med-mal plaintiff’s firm in town, a hospital ICU administrator, and the current law clerk for a judge on the appellate court that would hear any appeal of the case.) We sat through about four hours of actual trial, spread out over three days, until the case got dismissed on a ground that had been perfectly apparent for at least two years before the trial date. (The trial judge only got the case the morning of jury selection, though, and it took him a couple days to read enough of the papers and motions to realize that he should be throwing it out. He apologized to the jury.)</p>
<p>Anyway, it’s a profoundly democratic institution, and one that could not be replaced by professional jurors without being completely gutted. And rest assured, the costs to society (and to you) would be much higher if people were required to go through with trials once the jury was impaneled. Some trials can go on for years, and weeks is not at all unusual. However annoyed you were to show up and not get entertained, you would have been much more annoyed to show up day after day and listen to that crap.</p>
<p>You still did a really important service! Feel proud, not mad.</p>
<p>Cases are plea bargained precisely because in some room in that courthouse a criminal KNOWS that a potential jury is close at hand just waiting to hear his or her case. No case would ever be plea bargained if that weren’t the situation.</p>
<p>And yes, crime and criminals ARE inconvenient!</p>
<p>I do understand the frustration of the OP. Clearly the court system understands that prospective jurors have no choice and they do not need to be efficient in calling and scheduling jurors. Why jury selection is allowed to go on for hours, or in major cases for weeks, is beyond me. The last time I was called I spent most of the morning waiting. Finally, I sat listening as nature of the case was described and prospective jurors were interviewed. It was clear that the case was totally without merit. At least I did not have to serve on a jury for a case that was likely to take about 2 weeks.</p>
I know this is true but it’s kind of a silly - if they knew that as of some day, say a week or two before the court date, they had to make up their mind or it’ll go to the jury trial regardless, it’d accomplish the same thing albeit without having to have 45 or 50 people standing idly by.</p>
<p>
Ain’t it the truth. Anything we can do to mitigate it is a good thing.</p>
<p>
Precisely one of my complaints. A bit of homework and scheduling could have avoided all of this.</p>
<p>
But I can only truly feel proud of things I accomplish and I feel that I accomplished nothing that day. I know that in a removed way there was some remote influence (my potential to be a jurist that day) but realistically, I did nothing.</p>
<p>
This is understandable and I hope he has a good experience. One of the ladies present in the panel was almost giddy to be on a jury but of course she never actually made it to one that day. If the system’s efficiency were improved then fewer people would have their day wasted and more of the people who show up would actually be able to participate in a jury.</p>
<p>Professional jurists or a panel of judges could probably be used to determine a lot of the civil lawsuits that otherwise consume the same jurists who would otherwise be serving on a criminal case. I believe a number of other countries follow this practice. </p>
<p>One of the times I went I was actually one of the random people placed in the jury box but was one of the first choices by one of the lawyers to be ejected. It seems that a lot of lawyers don’t like engineering types in their juries.</p>
<p>About 2.5 years ago I was called for jury duty. The first day I was supposed to be there was actually the day before our granddaughter’s due date. I mean DIL’s due date. Anyway, there was no way I could call in and actually talk to someone. I had to sit through jury selection with strict orders from the judge that we could not have cell phones (which I could understand…but I was really fretting!). During the first break I ran out to the waiting area to turn my phone back on and check messages, call H and see if anything had happened, etc. Some of the other possible jurors knew my situation and would ask for updates.
Finally, we went back in and the judge starts asking if people have excuses as to why they think they shouldn’t be there. I (and a handful of others) have to stand up and give our reasons of why we might be “distracted” or needed elsewhere, or whatever.
Then one of the lawyers begins to question each of us who’d given an “I want out” story. When he asked me if I thought the any-minute arrival of my first grandchild might cause me to be distracted, you could hear nearly every woman in the court laughing quietly. </p>
<p>They let me go. </p>
<p>But I’d still like to do it someday, just because. I was summoned one other time years before, but I had just moved to another county. </p>
<p>I had a co-worker who was on a jury of a horrible case in Seattle several years ago. Some woman had scalded her baby to death and then (get this!) tried to blame it on her preschooler :mad: . I felt bad for my friend who spent weeks having to listen to the testimony.</p>
<p>I was called for county jury duty and was selected as an alternate juror, which meant that I had to sit through the whole case (3 days), BUT, was not allowed to go into the jury room for deliberations! They told me I could leave but I stayed because I wanted to see what the verdict was. The jury was unanimous - the defendant received just enough money to cover medical costs and the spouse $0 (she refused to give her husband migraine shots for his headache but claimed lack of companionship).</p>
<p>I just hope they dont call me for federal jury duty…</p>
<p>I had to do jury duty once while in undergrad. It was basically 8 hours of Gameboy and sleeping in the waiting room, only to be dismissed by the judge because I had school. </p>
<p>I suppose it’s better than Japan, where juries are non-existent.</p>
<p>I am about to go on jury duty in June (having deferred), I seem to be called regularly every three years. The last time, I was an alternate for a drunk driving case.</p>
<p>Be glad there are juries in this country, that the courts are not kangaroo courts where guilt and sentence have already been decided beforehand. I’m not complaining. I’ll take along a good book.</p>
<p>My experience with the justice system left me wondering couldn’t there be a better way for some cases?
I was in a fender-bender, my fault, less than 5 miles per hour, no damage to either car, but the other driver complained of neck and shoulder pain. I have excellent insurance, BUT. Other driver goes to physician the day after the accident, couple of X-rays, some Advil, told to take it easy a few days, never returns to orthopedist. Six months later, starts going to a chiropracter. Two years later, I get a summons, she’s suing me for $50000. (During the trial, I learn that the lawsuit was the chiropracter’s idea, she couldn’t pay him, she was a cashier at a grocery store, and he thought much of her arm and shoulder pain was due to repetitive motion stress at her job, but she couldn’t get workman’s comp)
My insurance is willing to settle for her chiro’s bill ($5000) but want her to be examined again by the original orthopedist in order to get a bill of good health now, and they want to see her med records. She refuses.
Case goes to court, full jury trial, 2, yes, 2 days (evidently trials don’t start until 10 am, and stop at 2 pm, with an hour for lunch), and she wins (my insurance never contested any of the facts of the accident, neither did I) and is awarded $1800 (which was actually a win for us, didn’t cover her chiro bill,the jury felt that much of her pain was due to job, not this 2 year old 5 mile an hour accident).
I, though, felt gypped - how much did this cost me as a taxpayer??? Not too mention lost work time for most everyone in the court. It is good to know the system works, but shouldn’t there be a better way for a claim of $5000, rather than a $10000 court proceeding?</p>
<p>Crossposted-following not in reference to post just above-</p>
<p>At least you didn’t have to pay a babysitter more than your jury pay…that happened to me many years ago. One way to get out of a so and so versus so and so’s insurance co case is to make comments about the deep pocket of the insurance co they might be trying to take advantage of when they ask you questions (in front of everyone) during jury selection- they knew I was a physician ahead of time, I briefly talked to one of the lawyers (knew his physician father) afterwards- my statement hopefully inflenced potential jurors and may have caused problems if made during the trial…my month of availability ended with that one appearance just one week before a vacation planned long before, I could have ended up on an extended trial…it was a real pain to not be able to schedule work until I knew I wasn’t needed. It’s been a while, but I think I had to be available every other month for six months…BTW-“peers”- how many physicians would be on a malpractice jury???</p>
<p>Full time students aren’t excused from the ‘service’ so how’s my very hard-working college student going to be spending her spring break? You guessed it - in the same jury room I sat in yesterday.</p>