Jury Duty

[mattcosta7]

just alittle rant thread. I was supposed to be heading down to NJMSP to track Thunderbolt tomorrow with my co-workers and 40 or so others tomorrow. Instead, however, Iam gonna be stuck sitting in a court, waiting to get dismissed from Jury Duty. Apparently after a certain number of postponals, you HAVE to show up for dismissal UGH!

What a way to lose out on a great track day

 

[GastonJ]

You're lucky I had 2 weeks of jury service at the start of this year. Out of the 2 weeks I only had 1 case to sit through and a total of 6 hours listening to evidence. I read two books and drunk quite a lot of coffee in those 2 weeks.

Not much fun tbh.

 

[Kilbane83]

I don't believe in jury duty. The people there are all dragged out of thier daily lives to sit through something most of them don't care about for $8/day and free coffee. All they're thinking about is how to get out of there as fast as possible. Guilt or innocence is a matter of which is more convienent. :disapprove:

 

[mattcosta7]

I don't believe in jury duty. The people there are all dragged out of thier daily lives to sit through something most of them don't care about for $8/day and free coffee. All they're thinking about is how to get out of there as fast as possible. Guilt or innocence is a matter of which is more convienent. :disapprove:

sad but true. I'm going in with the intention of getting at least a postponement.

I'm a full time student, and I haven't even done a full month at my new job yet, so taking more than 1 day off life at a time, is not something I have the luxury to do

 

[reiobard]

never had to worry about jury duty yet. But i am not looking forward to when i do need to do it...

 

[stevesnj]

I was actually picked for a murder case...it was amazing and very cool to serve in a jury. After this experience and even though I was happy to serve, I believe that there should be a professional jury system. Things would move so much quicker.

 

[karmageddon14]

my old manager got to sit on the jury of a guy who committed a triple axe murder.

 

[wrightme43]

I have been twice, only chosen to sit on two cases. One I got to the end and the lottery drop me and one other juror from the pool to leave the others to make the decision.

The other was a lady that had a stroke and was just gone giving her rights to her sister to take care of her.

It sucks but it needs to be done. Bummer on losing out on the track day though.

 

[poorwboy]

I just throw jury summons away. I cant afford to miss a day of work. And if you tell them that, they say its not a good enough excuse.

What about all the welfare recipients, they can go they dont work.

 

[reiobard]

i think it would be somewhat fun if i knew the commitment was only going to be one day, but i would not be a fan of getting in on an OJ type of case...

 

[tom5796]

I don't believe in jury duty. The people there are all dragged out of thier daily lives to sit through something most of them don't care about for $8/day and free coffee. All they're thinking about is how to get out of there as fast as possible. Guilt or innocence is a matter of which is more convienent. :disapprove:

Umm, what??? The right to have trial by a jury of your peers is a fundamental, even core, right for US citizens. Inconvenient to have jury duty, yes, but it should be embraced. It is much better than the alternative.

But we could go back to kings giving the thumbs up or down, perhaps.

I have been called on a couple of times and got a trial once. Frankly, I was heartened by the amount of time and thorough vetting the jury undertook instead of arriving at a "convenient" decision. Our decision was going to have a REAL impact on this person's life.

Btw, we found a guy innocent of drunken driving. The state did not provide enough evidence to prove guilty.

 

[tom5796]

What about all the welfare recipients, they can go they dont work.

If you ever found yourself in court would you want a bunch of welfare, and I'll guess, uneducated, folks deciding on your fate? I think you'd want a good mix of folk on the bench.

C'mon guys. I'll be first in line to say that we are taxed too much (see my sig), and I'm a staunch fiscal conservative constitutionalist (note: that does not mean "Republican," and conservatism does not mean religious), but a duty to be an American is to sit on a jury from time to time.

Here's an idea: Don't vote for Obama, save on some taxes, and devote a day (on average) every five years. Not a bad deal for liberty.

 

[mattcosta7]

I wouldn't even mind doing it if I could schedule it myself. Getting a letter in the mail saying "You need to serve within the next 6 months to a year, would be much better than getting a letter september 14th, saying I need to serve september 22nd, and that I can't postpone again without showing up. They pick days that I can't serve. I'm missing my track day tomorrow...if I get a trial, I'll be missing at least one test, and a day at work, when the only other person in my department is already on vacation.

 

[tom5796]

I wouldn't even mind doing it if I could schedule it myself. Getting a letter in the mail saying \\"You need to serve within the next 6 months to a year, would be much better than getting a letter september 14th, saying I need to serve september 22nd, and that I can't postpone again without showing up. They pick days that I can't serve. I'm missing my track day tomorrow...if I get a trial, I'll be missing at least one test, and a day at work, when the only other person in my department is already on vacation.

System processes can and should always be improved (in this instance to help people plan), but it is separate from the issue having a core system of trial by jury (of one's peers).


Maybe I'm just mad abouts the Pats pathetic performance today....

 

[chimneydoc]

I get out of it everytime, I just tell them that I'm am self employed and it works evertime. I'm really self employed, also I used to be a reserve Police officer, they don't bother me.

Doc

 

[mattcosta7]

I'm postponed till 1/5/09

A friend of mine recently got released after serving 11 years of a 20 year sentence

Reason for early release: Conviction overturned due to coersion by the DA of 5 witnesses. All of whom changed testimony and magically recieved new cars shortly thereafter (very NICE new cars at that). He was serving for a manslaughter charge when the actual act was self defense. He was getting beaten by a man with a baseball bat, when he grabbed his legally owned gun and fired in self-defense, 3 shots to the core, as he was trained to as an NYPD member. The testimony of the only 5 witnesses changed markedly from their accounts to news crews on scene, to their accounts in court, and as was recently decided, corruption by both village police and the DA were deemed the main cause.

Well, all of 40 minutes in a courtroom, and I'm postponed again. The limit to postpone is 6 months, so they'll be in for another postponement come January 5th, as I am planning on taking a class this winter session as well.

I'm pretty annoyed by the rudeness and lack of decency shown by most of the court workers. It's disturbing how condecending they are, just because they have more control of the situation. As I not so nicely explained to the jury selection people, I'M being inconvenienced by them, not the other way around, so the least they could do is be courteous.

One of the jury selection people called me a criminal straight to my face for needing to postpone, telling me how I was breaking a law by trying to shirk my civil duties. I told him to politely screw himself. Apparently it's a crime to be in school now?


AND to top it all off, I got a call from one of my coworkers telling me how sick thunderbolt is with only 50 people running in 3 groups. 8 instructors. 1:3 instructor to rider ratio per group would have been SICK!

I guess I'll have to wait until next year or something. Hopefully I can get time to head to one of the 3 remaining Nesba days at NJMP

 

[GastonJ]

hmmm forgive me if I'm wrong, but I get the feeling that you guys don't really want juries made up of everyday folk to exist

Why anyone would want a professional juror system is beyond me. Pay someone $50 bucks an hour to sit on a jury and the case would go on forever. Pay them $50 bucks a trial and each trial would last 10 minutes. *shrug* Is that the sort of system you'd want in place of a jury of your peers? May as well just have judges who are usually picked form the elite with no real understanding of life who've already got an opinion. Why else would the police arrest and bring someone to trial who is innocent???, so they must be guilty because the police never make mistakes do they?, witnesses never lie, do they?

Sadly until someone does come up with a better system I'd stick with doing jury service, no matter how much I lose while having to serve. In the UK we don't get the choice of dates btw, and you have to have a really good reason to postpone.

 

[Kilbane83]

Let me start this reply by saying that this is a negative view post and I'm a jerk. I have become one due to being screwed over more times than I care to admit. Do my views apply to everyone? No of course not. There are good people in the world, I used to be one. But after working in various customer service fields, dealing with people or all ages and races on both a professional and personal level for many years, I've found that the majority of people are terrible human beings and just plain suck. Unfortunatly the few remaining good ones suffer because of this. Moving on..

hmmm forgive me if I'm wrong, but I get the feeling that you guys don't really want juries made up of everyday folk to exist

That'd be my point. Everyday ordinary people aren't your peers. They're mothers, students, people working 2 jobs to make ends meet, and yes the the people on welfare that someone posted as being less than intellegent. They're a compromise of people hand selected by the lawyers trying to defend/accuse you. They have better things to do than spend hours listening to legal jargon and tactics.

It's a inconvience to some, having to go downtown in a major city to try to find parking near the courthouse, sit there all day and hopefully not be choosen to sit on the bench. Pay $15 for a slice of pizza at the food court because you can't leave. And you get a $8 check in the mail some weeks later.. yeehaw that might pay for the gas you spent getting there and back.

It's a more than an inconvience being choosen and losing more than one day of work, school, or paying for daycare. Sometimes it just isn't a option and the system doesn't care. I can honestly say I feel sorry for anyone that gets me on a jury bench. They should at least provide you with food and board and reasonable reembursement. I'd be more than happy to go with the consensus of everyone else to get out of there as fast as possible. Like I said, guilt or innocence is a matter of convience.

In the U.S. you don't get to schedule a date either. They simply tell you show up this date unless you have a good excuse, then they just reschedule you again at another date of thier choosing. You have to do you "civic duty" eventually.

Do I have a better solution? Nope, unfortunatly as long as humans have emotions there is no unbiased way to judge people. Do you think a jury of "peers" hand selected by the lawyers is not biased in one way or another? Hell no. Do you think that they really want to be there or really care what's going on? If you do, you have more faith in humanity than I do.

Anyway I don't like posting about political/religous stuff because they're very negative subjects for me.. so....