jury duty? in college?

GladGradDad
Sat, 13 Apr 2013 17:11:27 +0000

bceagle:

My comments were generalized ones. Stepping back, if we’re looking for truth, justice, and the American way, being able to read body language when listening to testimony is important for jury members, judges, and any innocent parties. You can’t really do that via videoconferencing, and I’ve been in many video-conferences.

And yes, being in the courtroom would result in much less distractedness than doing it via video-conferencing - no cell phones, no people knocking on the door, no dog that needs to go out, no laptop to read email or play on CC, not text messages, IM, and the list goes on and on. If you ever do video-conferences I’m sure you know what I mean.

I do think something should be done to decrease the wasted time of people called for jury duty. In my area, when one is called they ‘must’ go to the courthouse the first day. If they’re not impaneled the first day then they’re done with the duty but they just killed that day regardless. And again, by my rough calculation, only about 18% actually ended up serving on the jury which seems incredibly inefficient.

I also don’t like the cavalier attitude of the courts and some judges who think being a member of a jury trumps any other obligations an individual might have and is inherently more important than anything else that individual might be doing. It isn’t, plain and simple.
Some courts and judges are relatively decent about it and some aren’t with some examples by posters on this thread.