Jury Duty Experiences

hayden
Sat, 21 Nov 2009 19:24:24 +0000

I’ve served on both a criminal trial for 2nd degree murder, and also on a grand jury. The trial was a terrible experience. All of you who had good experiences on juries should count your blessings. We had to vote on 16 separate counts. We were unanimous on 15 of the 16 counts, including the count for the 2nd degree murder. There were 3 of us who felt the defendant was innocent of the 16th count. Oh, wow. The arguments were horrible. I heard things like “he’s guilty of everything else, so he must be guilty of this.” My favorite was “oh, you know how these people are - if he’s not guilty this time, he’ll be guilty next time.” But the 3 of us, who interestingly were the two most educated, and the one least educated, held out. One of the jurors even mentioned that he knew where I had parked, and I should watch it. I was getting real close to calling the officer in charge of the jury and complaining.

Have any of you served on a grand jury? That’s an experience. 2 days a week for 6 weeks. But it was truly fasincating. We heard many, many cases and returned indictments in most (but not all). In one instance, the prosecuters brought in a witness. I’d never heard of this before. But apparently she had refused to talk to the police, who thought she was a key witness. So they put her before the grand jury. The way it works then is that she is sworn in, and we jurors got to ask all the questions we wanted. The jurors had zero sympathy for her. Frankly, I’m shocked that no TV show has ever had a grand jury shown, because that was the most interesting experience I’ve had in a long time.