February 22, 2004

• (and we're up to 630 members? yowsa! we were around 430-something when i last looked...)
• metafilter had a week long black out while you were gone, so loads of members and lurkers flooded over here to happy monkey land :-) i've been called to jury duty twice (in canada) and got out of it once, for financial reasons. i have to admit i was really put out by the experience and hope to hell they never call me again.
• jury duty is rather easy to avoid once it is established that one has a distrust of enforcement practice and practitioners and a deep empathy for the poor victims of society and it's vicious attempts to ostracise them by incarceration.;-)
• I find it disgusting what juries are paid compared to what attorneys and expert witnesses receive. The juries shoulder enormously more responsibility, and at a much greater sacrifice, and are paid a ridiculous compensation. If the legal process carries with it such honor and civic duty, then let's don't pick on the jury -- I want to see a cap on attorney fees.
• I think Seattle might be pretty lax about excusing yourself from Jury Duty. I called the day before I was to report once and said I wouldn't be able to do it. She replied that it wasn't optional. I explained, "Yeah, well...it's not really gonna work out for me this time..." That was it. (My excuse was starting a new job the next day -- so it was pretty legitimate -- but still surprising.) I've done it once before that -- it wasn't fun, but I did feel sort of good afterwards.
• I got "asked" (it's a bit like the draft, isn't it?) while in Cali, but you're required to be a legal citizen so it was easy to get out of. That said, I'd like to do it one day, I guess. I think it works the same way here, but I've never been asked.
• I've never been called, but my mother served recently on a civil case involving police brutality that (of course) was caught on videotape. I don't think everyone's jury duty experience is quite as interesting as hers. I would, however, proudly serve if asked.
• I've been called, declined my employer's offer to get me out of the "waste of time", and ambled along. I got bounced out at jury select time by the defence barrister. The case turned out to be a he said/she said alleged rape of one soldier by another. Note that here in New Zealand the lawyers aren't allowed to ask you questions before they challenge you as they are in the US (and hence on TV); heaven only knows what they based their guess that I was undesireable on. I'm dismayed by (a) the way jury pay has failed to keep pace with actual incomes (it's something like $50/day in New Zealand, which is about half the minimum wage) and (b) the way people try avoiding it. Next time a jury comes up with decisions you think are crazy, you might want to think about the fact that people working the court system identify one major problem with jury trials as being the people who show up for them. The cases you care about are almost certainly being decided by a group of people who look nothing like society at large.
• here in wash d.c., jurors get US$30 a day IF their employer doesn't pay their salary while they're on jury duty (mine does). also, jurors get a $4 a day transportation fee, and deliberating jury members get $5 a day for lunch. mine was a cocaine possession with intent to distribute case. it was obvious to all the jurors that this guy was a drug dealer, but the prosecution didn't prove the case. so we had to find him not guilty. sigh. one older juror held out, so it was 11-1 for several hours. "this guy's a scumbag criminal! we need to put him away!" well, yeah, but did the prosecution prove that? no. too much "reasonable doubt." the attorneys for both sides came in afterwards to ask the jury how we felt about various witness testimony, etc. it's sad, but the government prosecutor said they just didn't have the resources to provide us with the proof we needed. oh well. meanwhile, the defendant hired not one but two attorneys at $300+ per hour. hmm.
• I did jury duty about ten years ago and ended up on a hung jury for a murder case, yet still finished the entire experience in less than two weeks (which was as long as my then-employer would pay me for "jury leave"...). Ever since, every time I get called, I tell the story about it and what I've learned from it and get excused re-e-al fast. There's a lot more to it than that, but I'll save that for my own blog... (I'm about seven anecdotes behind...)
• My mother was called up a couple of years ago.. we were all amazed when she wasn't immediately disqualified. Typically, it seems anyone with a BRAIN seems to get ousted, and a WOMAN with multple DEGREES? Anyway, she was kept for this trial of a woman who murdered her baby. Took over a week to finish, and when everything was done Mum's "jury time" wasn't up, so she was called up for another case. At which point, not EVER wishing to see photos of a bashed 18 month old again, she turned around and declared herself done. Can't blame her, really.
• Arrested once. Never done jury duty.
• I've been on call several times, served as an alternate once (which was annoying -- you have to sit through all the testimony, then don't get to deliberate), actually been on a jury once. Several Hispanic kids were accused of having stolen a guy's wallet on 42nd Street. We got a lot of testimony about the traffic at that time of day, where the cops were, their line of sight, &c; after much discussion we decided they couldn't have ID'd the guys positively and the fact that the kids had approximately the amount of cash between them that the guy said he lost just wasn't "proof beyond a reasonable doubt," and we voted to acquit. I had been annoyed at having to serve, but when it was over I was very glad I had, and would recommend the experience to anyone. It's not often you get the chance to really perform a civic duty or to make a decision that so severely affects someone's life, and it feels pretty good. To all you deadbeats who insist on getting out of it: pffthbthfththth!