Why you should never say stupid stuff to get out of jury duty

I thought the one I saw was great. Just a bunch of idiot miscreants bumbling and stumbling their way to a few years in federal prison. Definitely popped a pin in "The Wire" idea that drug cartels are populated by these criminal masterminds. I swear it took them 10 phone calls just to figure out which Speedway gas station everyone was talking about to meet at.

 

Dick -- as I recall, the defense wanted to videotape her testimony because she had some pressing matter to attend to in her home country so she had a previously scheduled trip, only Darden busted her by proving that she hadn't bought a plane ticket as she said she had. What followed was a lot of admission that Mister Yonny and the group had instructed her to lie and to change her story. But all of that happened outside the jury's view, so the jurors knew nothing of Rosa Lopez's testimony or the intentional deception on the part of the defense team. To those of us who watched the trial, though, that behavior went a long long way toward showing what the defense was up to.

 

She was trying to say that she was so stressed out by being a part of the case that she was leaving the country and going back home. But it turned out that she hadn't bought a ticket and that she had been parading around on tabloid talk shows telling her story. (Although I think she did end up going back to Central America in the end). I don't remember it being intentional deception as much as defense incompetence, i.e. thinking they had something that they didn't. But I can certainly see how it came off that way. I'll dig out Toobin's book this weekend to see what the specifics were.

 

I think the mere fact that this thread was started indicates I'm likely to get a summons any day now. I have no idea what reaction I'll get when I tell them about my background.

I would hope that way more than the majority of arrestees are guilty, if for no other reason than to support the idea that police do their job well. I think it probably is the majority, though I'd stop short of saying 100 percent. Nobody in any profession nails it 100 percent of the time.

 

Most people who are charged are guilty. But a huge reason that that is the case is because of the reasonable doubt standard. It functions as a shadow over police and prosecutorial behavior. Sucks when someone gets off because of it, but it's good for the rest of us.

 

At my third jury duty stint last year, for a multiple shooting, I get picked despite the fact that I tell the judge I know the DA personally (but not closely) and his wife (who I was pretty friendly with when we were co-workers at the paper). Go through voir dire, THEN I get tossed.

 

I don't know why anyone who has a salaried job, or works for a company that guarantees the wages for jury duty, wouldn't want to do it. The one jury I've been on, my choice was either to work nights for two weeks or to sit in a jury box from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. with a one-hour lunch break in a courthouse that was right downtown near a bunch of good restaurants. Tough call.

I did feel bad for self-employed business operators, though. The judge wasn't hearing any of their claims of hardship.

 

I've never gotten past the first round of jury selection, but my wife sat on a jury a few years ago in a statutory rape case, where a guy was accused of have sex with his niece. She said it was a fascinating process. They ended up acquiting the guy, largely because they deemed the victim's testimony patently unbelievable. As a sidenote, she said the principals in the case reinforced every negative stereotype of inbred Southern rednecks you could think of. This from a woman whose family roots in South Mississippi go back to the 1790s.

 

I sat on an involuntary manslaughter case once, involving a woman whose car had hit another driven by a 16-year-old at an intersection where six streets came together. The weirdest day was the second day, when I sat through testimony involving very detailed descriptions of the injuries to the teen (but no photos, thank God) until 4 p.m. At 5 p.m. I was talking to a football coach about his team's playoff game, and it was just surreal, the difference in perspective.

Earlier that year, I had been to a trial where the jury saw pictures of a burn victim. I saw them from afar and didn't know what they were at first, until I saw the jurors' faces turn white, which made me doubly glad there were no autopsy or other photos.

We found the defendant not guilty, because the prosecution's version of events didn't add up. It took about an hour after the 9-3 initial vote. Lots of give-and-take, lots of seriousness in the room.

 

Well, I won't answer the questions the way the woman in the original post did, and I find no other good reasons hear for getting out of jury duty, so I guess I'll be reporting bright and early tomorrow morning.

At least they have wireless.

 

guilty people plea bargain. Trials are for the innocent and those that have bad records and can't plea bargain

 

I got Grand Jury duty a year ago. If you want to see people desperately trying to talk their way off of the jury, that's where it happens. It's like 4 months, guaranteed.

One Asian guy kept saying "I'm racist, cuz I hate caucasians!" over and over. It didn't work at first but he just kept making up stuff to make himself ineligible, so they cut him loose just so they wouldn't have to deal with him anymore.

One woman said "I'll be honest -- I get bored really easily, so I won't be paying attention at all." She was stuck on the jury.

At least half the room came up with ailments or sick relatives they had to care for.

By the way, being a journalist didn't mean squat to them. I've ended up on a regular jury for a drunk driving case, too.

I ended up as an alternate on the grand jury, and was never called in to serve before it ended.

It did provide me with the longest day of my life, though. Thanks to state law, all the jurors and alternates had to spend 8 hours sitting in a basement room listening to a computer voice read the entire book of state statutes. Apparently at one time they had actual human voices read it but defense attorneys complained that humans would naturally stress some words more than others, so it was 8 hours of a flat computer monotone droning through the entire law book.