Jury Nullification

I think there needs to be some kind of double blind selection for juries such that the acting lawyers are confident no juror worh prejudice against their client is selected, but also thst no juror is selected/rejected based on a standing lawyers prejudice. I distinctly remember last time i was called for jury dury, it was a drunk driving case where the defendant was a latino male. His lawyer actively used his privilege to reject a certain number of jurors (i think it’s 3) no questions asked, to remove all the female and younger jurors from serving, most obviously becauese older men would be less critical of drunk driving.

I think if most people here were jurors on cases where we did not disagree with the law itself, we would decide guilty or not guilty based as much on facts and evidence as possible. Or at least, we believe that we would base our decision on facts and evidence, and not emotion or rhetoric, to a greater degree than the average person. I’ve always been under the impression that lawyers on both sides of a criminal case want jurors who can be swayed with emotional arguments, and thus they would be prejudiced against anyone like a software engineer.

I’ve been summoned* for jury duty four times, been in impanelment proceedings twice, and been a juror once. Being a juror is rather interesting the first time through, and I’m willing to do it again.

A coworker was a grand juror, and, holy cats, that is a lot more work. I think it was two months up front and then callbacks for several days for as long as two years afterward. I am less willing to do that but would if summoned.

I was aware of jury nullification, and I’m certain I’ve seen the “based on the law” wording before, but I was not convinced (then or now) that jury nullification was a violation a promise to act “based on the law”.

* I’ve received more requests for jury service, but there’s a frequency limit to how often I have to (am allowed to?) serve.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-FI6D8ZXpc

I think that if you literally showed up at court and your entire goal was to nullify any and all cases specifically because you don’t think the government should exist or something, you would have to answer yes, if you’re being honest. However, if you show up expecting to be able to make a judgement strictly based on the law, you can reasonably answer no.

I would guess that 99.99% of the time I believe I wouldn’t even consider jury nullification, even though I’m aware of its existence.

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I feel like that’s like answering “Is there any reason you would choose to wear a winter coat on Tuesday of next week?” with a no.

I mean, it’s June, I don’t reasonably see myself needing a coat. But, there’s a reason I may wear a coat next Tuesday, and it’s if the outside resembles a snowstorm. Some would say you lied when you say no. Some wouldn’t. I’m not really sure where I sit I guess.

Deductive vs inductive. 99% of the time we’re answering things inductively.

You can also start out confident in your ability to be part of the legal process as intended, yet have your inner conscious tell you, during the trial, that there is no way you’re going to be part of upholding this fuckstick-ass law and the legislations that led to it, damn the torpedos.

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We’re not Kellhus. We don’t have the thousandfold thought. We don’t know all that which has come before. WHAT DO YOU SEE?

During juror selection both laywers (defense and prosecution) are present and can ask questions of the juror and basically both have a veto ability to prevent a potential juror from joining the trail. Sometimes this is sped up and done in front of the judge because they burned through a whole pool and did not find enough jurors and a 2nd pool had to be brought in.

My experience with juror selection is that result juries tend to be majority female and skew toward 40s and up, but they’ll take a 20 something female too.

I think a good start to get people to be more willing to serve on a jury and not get out if it (thus increasing and diversifying the pool of not old people) is to pay jurors properly, not $50 a day and a shitty takeout sandwich. Require employers to give paid leave with a minimum $20 an hour and the government makes up the difference if someone is paid less than that.

We’ve already got another problem in that most of the time nothing makes it to a jury to begin with.

Yes, that is true. Employers should be required to pay whatever your wages are, in full, when you are in jury duty. They should not be able to fire, demerit, replace, or in any way punish the employee who is there. They just gotta eat it.

There should be another wage the government pays to jurors which should be at least the legal minimum wage (assuming it is also raised to where it should be). This wage would go to all jurors, regardless of whether they are employed are not. Employed people get a bonus for their trouble. Unemployed get it. Everyone gets it.

I think another idea is to make jury duty more convenient and less time consuming. Why do we have to call a number every day to check if we need to come in? Just text us to let us know if we need to come in. If the court is in a distant location that is hard to get to, free transportation should be provided or compensated.

Make the waiting room less boring. Make it comfy with free food, good wi-fi, free massages, exercise equipment, swimming pool, etc.

Why are people even in the waiting room in the first place? Last time I went I sat in the room. My name wasn’t called after waiting almost all day. I was told I could go home and didn’t have to come back for X years. They gave me a piece of paper proving it.

If you know you need X people, I understand calling more than X people to tell them to show up. But the moment X+1 people have arrived, send someone home immediately.

Even the people who did have their name called waited in the room for hours before that process began. Why didn’t they just tell us to show up two hours later? Why did they make more people come than were necessary? Why did we even have to wait at all? Why not just walk in and go straight to voir dire? Courts gotta get their logistics sorted out with jurors as being the priority in terms of convenience since they are the ones having their lives disrupted the most. The inconveniences should fall upon the lawyers, judges, etc. since it’s their job to be there, and they’re being paid more to be there.

Not only that, but as we discussed, there are some categories of people who will basically never pass voir dire. For example, lawyers aren’t going to be able to get on juries. Therefore, don’t bother calling them for jury duty in the first place. There’s a jury survey that goes out. I just took one recently, which means I might get called in soon. When you know what the case is, use the info on that survey to weed people out so you get a higher hit-rate on acceptable jurors and don’t waste time of people you are going to reject anyway.

That’s not a bad idea tbh. It won’t fix all the problems, but it’s a step in the right direction.

I will say that just paying people well to serve on juries likely won’t fix the issue of people trying to get out of it.

I think that has more to do with this culture we have of glorifying work, with anything that’s not your job being seen as unimportant.

I served a week of jury duty for a criminal assault case in 2017 and was paid a grand total of 18 dollars, no food provided by the city of Philadelphia. There are much, much lower compensation for jurors already then you are stating. Free lunch and a 50 dollar per Diem would be a huge step up.

I can totally get behind this, I’ve spent hours waiting in the general pool before getting called into a case.

I’ve always had jobs that just paid you while you are on jury duty. Since I never get selected anyway, it’s a free weeklong vacation where I sit in a room somewhere playing Switch games or reading.

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Wait, you still take the time off even if you’re not selected? Usually here we just have to call the court in the morning Monday to Friday.

I called. Sometimes they told me not to come. When they did tell me to come I had to go and sit.

Why did I have to call them, why can’t they call me instead? Sure, keep the option to call them, but calling me should be the default.

After calling they still made everyone wait for hours. Don’t tell us to show up that many hours early and waste our time.

Last time I served for jury duty, I read half of Watchmen before being dismissed after lunch.

The most recent time I was summoned, they emailed me the night before that I didn’t need to show up. This was the Tuesday after Unplugged.

I am pretty sure this is true.

It’s not required, but every job I’ve had did. This is another big reason by grand jury duty can be so onerous—presumably you’re going to get jurors who are either retirees or who have “good” jobs that continue to pay, which surely skews the jury pool.