<p>The system is geared to limiting the amount of information that a jury hears. Take a look at the Duke Lacrosse case and the Grand Jury system. The Grand Jury only got a small bit of information and it was misleading to boot. You had a completely corrupt criminal justice system from the judges, prosecutors, police and politicians. It took forever for the Attorney General and the Bar to step in and even then it cost the defendents a million each to defend themselves against a legal and media onslaught.</p>
<p>“Maybe the one person who would have voted “not guilty” made up some excuse to get out of serving.”</p>
<p>Non sequitur. That person may have been just as likely to put the dude away because he was portrayed by the prosecution and media as a bad guy.</p>
<p>OP here. It’s ironic that this thread resurfaced this week. I am supposed to call on Sunday night to find out if I need to report on Monday. I’ve done a little online research on this particular court. It seems as if many of the cases are civil rather than criminal. The last time I was selected for the jury was a civil case. I’m hoping the attorneys question me about that case. We found in favor of the defendant so I’m also hoping the defendant’s attorney says “dismissed.” If the case lasts only a couple of days I won’t mind doing my civic duty. If it goes all week, I’ll be a bit upset as I am supposed to leave for a family event on Friday.</p>
<p>My sister served on a jury a couple of years ago and after it was all over she chatted with a friend who is a cop and was furious to find out common knowledge info which was never presented in court. All bureaucracies are are by nature inefficient :(</p>
<p>I am sitting here filling out a 4 page jury pool questionnaire with really nosy questions. Apparently there are so many law enforcement personal in our tiny town that they try to eliminate all the auto excused people who are in law enforcement, friends with cops & BP, etc in order to make the process less of a time waster for people. They have not had a case go to trial in 3 years so I am keeping my fingers crossed for a one day thing at most.</p>
But even if that worked it just gets one out of that one trial, not dismissed from jury duty, and they still would have had to show up and spend the day. In this (new) OP’s case it sounds like the D is currently in China and otherwise at the other end of the state so just showing up for the duty is the burdensome part whether she ends up on a jury or not. Besides, I doubt very many college students would actually do that when facing the judge even if they wanted to.</p>
<p>One thing I’ve noticed so far anecdotally is that the lawyers don’t seem to like engineers on the jury. I’ve heard they don’t really want someone who thinks more logically than emotionally. So far I’ve always been dismissed from the jury even when I thought I was a more likely candidate than some of the others they kept.</p>
<p>I’ve been called twice. The first time I served on a DWI case. It was very rewarding, because one of the jurors was a new citizen (6 weeks!) and from the Soviet Union (it was 1988 when I served). When we got to deliberations, her first question was “the judge didn’t tell us whether to find him guilty or not, what do we do?” We explained to her that it really was up to us, and everyone stopped whining about jury duty then and there. We found him guilty on one charge and innocent on the other.</p>
<p>The second time, it was a car-breaking-into case, and I’d recently had my car breaking into, and when the judge described the case, I felt an enormous surge of fury. I told the judge I just couldn’t see being objective, and he dismissed me.</p>
<p>I received notice for August, but postponed it until October (taking S4 to college end of August). In the past, when our sons received notice, we let them know they were away for school and they were excused. The last excuse we gave was that S moved out of state. </p>
<p>The only time I was called, was for grand jury where I was an alternate. They were flexible, allowing main jurors to take time off, so I ended up serving 1 day over a 3 month period. It really PO’ed my wife since she ended up being called like 4 times compared to my once since we’ve been living here.</p>
<p>It may not have been inefficiency but a constitutional issue. By the time the case goes to trial, the procedural matters are taken care of. Just like on Law & Order, you can get certain evidence or confessions thrown out of court if those confessions or evidence were obtained by violating someone’s constitutional rights.</p>
<p>So at trial, you won’t hear about that evidence.</p>
<p>Allow me to vent. I just finished 4 weeks of state/county grand jury duty 5 days a week 10AM-5PM. 10 days paid by employer, 10 days nada but the $40 a day from the court. I lost a decent amount of income that is needed for current college son and upcoming senior dtr. OK I get the civic duty aspect ect but of the 20 days/140 hrs spent in my opinion essentially incarcerated we actually spent less than 50% of the time hearing testimony/ voting on indictments. We heard 49 cases. There were days we sat for 6/7 hrs doing nothing but watching movies. Mind you we were 1 of 2 panels of 23. 46 people spending 50% or more of their time doing nothing while our jobs went neglected and if you were self employed losing valuable income. The inefficiency is ridiculous and 4 full weeks is an abuse of our time & ability to make a living. I’d rather go to jail for 30 days at least they feed you there. At least I can’t be called again for 8 years at the state level, 2 at the Federal level. Federal Grand jury is 1 day a week for 18 up to 24 months. My husband just got called for Fed trial jury. It definitely seems once you show up & serve they keep calling you back again & again while many others never get called or serve. There has to be a better way. If I ever get called again I will do whatever I have to not to serve because the stress & aggravation almost gave me a stroke.</p>
<p>I live in the U.S. Virgin Islands, where residents are happy on the rare occasions where government problems are a matter of poor planning rather than corruption. When local courts convene and there are no jurors, cops grab people off the streets. That’s right, you get plucked out of the grocery store parking lot and find yourself on a jury. And as I understand it, it is not only legal here but in the states as well. Here we have a CC like message board where locals warn one another when such goings on are in the works. I would actually welcome a letter with time to plan my schedule to accommodate serving jury duty. For those who don’t want to serve, all you have to do during voir dire is say “I’ve heard about the case and I think s/he’s guilty.”</p>
<p>I’m surprised they made you serve that long when you’d lose income after a reasonable 10 days employer paid. I haven’t seen that happen around here (but maybe it does) but I think the court can if they really want. However, any public employee - teachers, city trash pickup, parks, city admin, postal employees, as well as most people working for big defense contractor companies (lots of them around here) don’t have a limit on the number of days of employer paid so I think they grab a lot of those along with retired and otherwise unemployed to serve on the long cases.</p>
<p>Also, they have students self-identify so they can try to get them on juries that’ll last less than 5 days. That’s nice because that way they don’t get stuck on a long trial. The downside is that ‘most’ of the trials in county superior court are less than 5 days so the students end up more likely to be picked to go on a jury.</p>
<p>Being on the grand jury is a whole different kettle of fish than being on a “regular” jury! I believe that in California, you have to volunteer for county grand jury service–that is, you can’t be forced to serve.</p>
<p>I am probably going to royally jinx myself but here goes: </p>
<p>I have never been called for jury duty. Never for any type of jury - county, state, federal, grand, etc. I’m 46 years old, have a drivers license, and have always been registered to vote. </p>
<p>My jury notice will probably arrive in the mail tomorrow…</p>
<p>An update–my daughter said she’d like to serve but the timing is terrible. Her probable course of action at this point is to declare residency in LA (where she’s registered to vote). Of course, a suburban girl is probably closer to being representative of the population up here compared to downtown LA, so it will be interesting to see if she gets called down there.</p>
<p>Before registering in LA she needs to consider the logistics of getting called to serve there - i.e. she probably can’t do it during the school session so she’d have to defer to breaks but would she be in LA or up there during the breaks? It might be easier to serve there during breaks than LA.</p>
<p>^^^appreciate the insight. We haven’t set on a final course of action yet, since she isn’t scheduled to report until August 6th. Thank you all for your advice!</p>
<p>“California, you have to volunteer for county grand jury service–that is, you can’t be forced to serve.”
I’m moving to California! Yes, Grand Jury vs trial is totally different. Trial for the most part results in 2 or less weeks at most assuming your actually chosen to sit on a jury. That is why most generous employers cover 10 days. Grand jury at the state & federal level are much more onerous. How state grand juries ( there are standing ones & longer term investigative ones) are run vary by state & even county. Either way if you are going to force people to give their time & attention without resentment to such an important purpose the least one should expect is an effective use of this time. Taking 4 weeks to do 2 weeks of work is an abuse of civic duty. If investigators, ADA’s ect can’t get their ducks in a row to present a case in a complete & timely manner to show the very minimal evidence needed to meet the burden of proof for an indictment from a Grand Jury then cut em loose ( both the accused & grand jurors).</p>
<p>“It may not have been inefficiency but a constitutional issue. By the time the case goes to trial, the procedural matters are taken care of. Just like on Law & Order, you can get certain evidence or confessions thrown out of court if those confessions or evidence were obtained by violating someone’s constitutional rights.”</p>
<p>Or you could misrepresent the evidence and common sense and not present exculpatory evidence as in the Duke Lacrosse case. In that case, the Grand Jury system was used to get around proscutors having to go through Probable Cause hearings. The proceedings are sealed so noone ever finds out what goes on. Of course in the Duke Lacrosse case, two of the Grand Jurors went on the media (with their bodies blacked out) and discussed what happened.</p>