Jury Duty
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cher71131 — 14 years ago(November 08, 2011 09:12 PM)
Craig's a free man. The show will go on. From Twitter:
Freed by judge who agreed I was too much of a showbiz douche to be in a jury in her courtroom. Thanks ( I think) Your Honor.
Man, just when you think you know someone. -
sabalon1 — 14 years ago(March 04, 2012 03:40 AM)
i am sure the material he would have culled from that experience would be priceless, as is the thought of him actually sitting thru the whole process without getting into any trouble lol
if it wasn't for my horse, i wouldn't have spent that year in college -
Randy-144 — 14 years ago(February 23, 2012 12:49 PM)
I was excused from a trial while sitting in the jury box when the prosecution exercised a peremptory challenge. When the two sides try to pick a jury that they think will give them the best result they are allowed to excuse a certain number of potential jurors without giving a reason why. I think the reason why in my instance is because when I was asked by the defense if I would be more likely to believe the testimony of a police officer over that of a civilian I said something to the effect that a police officer is just as capable of giving false testimony as anyone else. I was quite happy to have spent only about four hours in court and was excused from further obligation.
When I got home an envelope was waiting for me in my mailbox from a Federal court. The letter told me to report for jury duty about a month later. I ended up being one of 23 members of a Grand Jury for a period of one year. It was only for one day each week and more than half the time we met for less than three hours. The pay wasn't bad $50 plus mileage. We met 48 times. The Grand Jury doesn't hear actual trials, it listens to one government witness, usually, who is asked by an Asst. US Attorney to give testimony. The Grand Jury votes whether there is enough probable cause to return an indictment so that the accused will be charged with a crime and sent to trial in front of another jury. -
Randy-144 — 11 years ago(January 14, 2015 11:54 AM)
I'm familiar with that 'ham sandwich' reference and it wasn't far from the truth. I guess we heard over a hundred cases in the 11 months we were empaneled and we returned an indictment on every single case. There was one where we almost returned a majority 'no' vote while we were discussing it among ourselves (23 jury members if they all showed up that day). The case was handled by an Assistant DA (as they all were) who had not originally been assigned the case and who was obviously unprepared not her fault on short notice. She was subbing for a guy whose wife was in the hospital giving birth. The guy showed up before we voted so he was allowed to present his case. After we heard his presentation we voted for indictment, thus keeping our perfect record intact.
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Randy-144 — 11 years ago(January 14, 2015 09:30 PM)
Unlike a trial jury where there are prosecution and defense attorneys who question prospective jurors, none of us were questioned by anyone before being selected. I assume we filled out a questionnaire that we mailed in a few weeks before being called in for our first meeting but I don't think our ethnicity would have been one of the questions.