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View Full Version : Jury Duty (Long and boring). . .


02-07-2002, 09:56 PM
. . . just like my last two days. I have been on jury duty since yesterday morning. It is an infuriating system, designed, apparently, by and for idiots. Since 9:00 yesterday morning, I have done nothing.


I arrived at the court at 9:00 yesterday. We sat until 10:15. Then they showed us a video explaining what an honor it was to sit there for an hour and fifteen minutes doing nothing. Then they put on C-Span so we could watch the legislatative branch of government doing just as wonderful a job as the judicial branch.


At 11:45, we were called into the courtroom. The judge explained to us that we 80 some odd people were part of the jury pool, from which 12 jurors and 2 alternates would be chosen. At 12:01, he looked at his watch, said that lunch is an hour and a half, but since it is already past 12:00, to report back at 1:45. At 2:10 we were let back into the courtroom. He then bored us to death for another hour, at which time he declared a 15 minute break.


The 15 minute break lasted another half an hour. When we got back in, they called 12 people to sit in the jury box. Before the judge or either lawyer could ask any questions, one lawyer had to leave because a verdict was coming in on another case he was handling. We were told to come report this morning at 9:00.


We go into the courtroom at 9. The judge strolls in at 9:30. Then they start asking completely irrelevant questions of all the jurors. By the time we left today at 4:20 (they work long, arduous days), they had gotten though about 20 of us.


HOW CAN A SYSTEM WHICH ALLOWS PARTICIPANTS TO SELECT JURORS BE FAIR? Perhaps HDPM or some of the other lawyers who post or lurk here can explain it to me. How can they let lawyers have peremptory challenges? It's like playing a ball game and letting the opposing managers choose the umpires.


This trial will undoubtedly last until the year 3000. You all know my feelings about guns, but I'm beginning to see the light. If I had one, I'd shoot both lawyers and the judge. Through the heart, dead.


Where is the urgency to get things done? How can they be so slow, so unprofessional, so uncaring about other people's (and the taxpayers') money and time? Why do they get up to ask a question and have to shuffle through a hundred pieces of paper and ask the same question the judge just asked? Why do they have to go to a sidebar to whisper things 56 times an hour?


Why do all of us have to sit there while they talk to other prospective jurors? Why is there only one elevator in the building? Why was my car dinged in the parking lot? Why does it take 3 or 4 or 20 days to pick a jury? Why don't they work more than an hour at a time without having to take a break? People were sleeping in the jury box. They were the lucky ones. The judge told the rest of us we were not allowed to go to the bathroom while the proceedings were going on, to take care of our toilet needs before we went into the courtroom. He didn't count on us having to throw up when we saw those proceedings.


I feel sorry for the man on trial. With all due respect to you attorneys out there, the system is a joke, a sad, inefficient, travesty of a joke. Surely verly little justice can ensue from such a system.


This was the Los Angeles County Court House in Beverly Hills, CA.

02-07-2002, 11:30 PM
Take lots of poker reading with you.


Alden Chase(tyro)

02-07-2002, 11:39 PM
So you live in Beverly Hills, huh?


/images/wink.gif

02-08-2002, 02:36 AM
Yes, and glad to see you read all the way to the end.


I just know I'm gonna have a nightmare tonight where they finally call my name and before I can get up Archie walks in, yells "big scramble", they re-shuffle the names, and mine goes on the bottom. . .

02-08-2002, 02:50 AM
I can't give youe a very long response now because I'm typing on a borrowed computernin the hotel lobby in your favorite city- Boise. I will give you a fuller answer later. Let's just say I tried a whole case last week- picking the jury to getting the verdict- in less time than it took you to be picked. Not all places are totally screwed up.

02-08-2002, 06:01 AM
I hope you get on a jury and go through an entire trial. Perhaps you'll change your mind. I was only on jury duty once and was selected to be on a jury within the first two hours I was there. People were more punctual than what you describe but the hours spent in court weren't excessive to say the least although I'm sure the lawyers and the judges spent time on cases out of court. I was fortunate that a person that I worked with (an odd coincidence) was also on a jury and occasionally we got to talk to each other. Obviously I couldn't talk to any of my fellow jurors during the case. He was serving on a jury in a very high publicity murder case as I was on a jury for a civil case. I came away with some definite opinions about the legal system which I wont' get into after the experience. One thing I will say is that I did come away with a much greater appreciation as to how important and how significant juries are in our legal system. I'd serve on a jury again in a heart beat.

02-08-2002, 07:25 AM
Jury duty does seem like a rather awful process to go through, I have to go in May, but I have an idea: I am gonna go dressed totally punked out. I'm gonna look like a total gutter punk- thick spiked hair, cutoff pants with safety pins through the hems, and some patches either sewed on real sloppy or hell just use more safety pins, maybe I'll die my hair some unnatural color again like my hi school days. Oh yeah I'll wear one of my more blasphemous shirts too, that'll encourage them to get me out of their courtroom real quick. Hopefully no lawyer will want me on their jury then, and almost for sure no DA will. I dunno but I think it'll work.


Kris

02-08-2002, 08:09 AM
boise..the progressive city..gl

02-08-2002, 12:51 PM
Is the judge elected or appointed? Civil or criminal trial?


If this was a criminal trial in front of an elected judge, send a copy of your post to the judge and DA. Tell them that for wasting your time, you will be working for their defeat in the next election.


The jury system is the best thing America has going for it, and they're pissing on it.

02-08-2002, 02:31 PM
The Canadian system is apparently much different with juries. I am not sure about criminal trials but I have conducted several civil jury trials and I can tell ya that things move a lot quicker here. Here, we don't get to ask the jurors any questions. We have a list which gives us their name and occupation. We see them stroll up when their names get called. That's our opportunity to size 'em up. We then say "challenge" or "content" as the case may be. Each side only has a limited number of challenges that they can use. That's it as far as jury selection goes.


Normally, the jury is empanelled with an hour.


One thing here that bites is that jurors cannot be questioned at any time as to what discussions took place during their deliberations. After doing a trial (win or lose), I sure would have liked the opportunity to get to talk to them and find out what led them to their verdict, what evidence they found persuasive, whether they liked my tie etc.

02-08-2002, 05:18 PM
A friend of mine showed up to deal with a minor in posession ticket wearing shorts and a t-shirt and the judge threatened to hold him in contempt if he ever showed up looking like that again. Good luck to you.

02-08-2002, 08:07 PM
What I don't understand is why the lawyers should have any say at all in which jurors are impanelled. If we want a fair and impartial jury, how can people who are not impartial take part in the selection process? It's as if the Yankees and Braves are about to play a big game and we let Joe Torre and Bobby Cox pick the umpires.


One of the lawyers today was not even listening nor observing when the judge was asking the potential jurors questions. He was looking around the room to see who was still left. The only thing he can be noticing is race, age, and sex. All of his peremptory challenges have been to remove young, white males from the jury.


Anyway, what's the theory behind letting the lawyers have a say in the process?

02-08-2002, 08:12 PM
Criminal trial. The judge is appointed for a term, and then they run for reappointment in an election. I figured out today that court is in session for roughly 4-1/4 hours a day. What a sad state of affairs.

02-08-2002, 08:40 PM
The baseball analogies are inapposite. No vetting process would be closer to have people off the street umpire a baseball game without regard to whether they were fans of one team, related to fans of a team, or even on a team. Lawyers do it because they're the only ones besides their clients that care. But I agree that the number of pre-empts should probably be reduced.


The first time I visited LA County Court (S. Monica) was as a battery victim. I was there all day, and all I could think about was the merits of anarchy.

02-08-2002, 08:42 PM
One reason for the process is to weed out jurors with preconceived notions and biases. In other words, Joe Torre may want to find out if the umpire is Bobby's brother-in-law or something.

But of course a necessary adjunct of that is that the lawyer is also looking to find people who he thinks will be most sympathetic to his client's cause.


I do a lot of defence work in motor vehicle accident cases. Generally, all other things being equal, insurers try to get middle aged women into the box. It is thought that they are more moderate in terms of handing out awards to injured claimants. I have no idea if this is actually a valid theory.


Like I say though, in Canada...well, at least in British Columbia, we generally are not allowed to ask jurors any questions. We size 'em up visually and say yea or nay...pretty unscientific stuff to say the least.

02-09-2002, 01:08 AM
Attorney-conducted voir dire is critical to a fair trial IMO. (BTW it is pronounced "vore dyer" not "voi deer" in places that are OK.) Attorneys don't get to select the jury, rather they de-select bad jurors. It is an unscientific process, but I have seen too many absolutely horrible, biased, unfair jurors weeded out to think it is useless. Judges can ask some stuff, but they don't get very good answers out of people. People just don't want to admit they're biased to the guy in the black robe who is telling them they have to be fair.


Also, I am a big believer in written questionnaires in big cases, particularly if there are issues of sexual abuse or race. They save time and provide more information. Jurors are much more forthcoming on written forms. People won't admit to being racists in public, but if you let them write their answer down on paper that just the attorneys and judge see, they will admit all kinds of stuff. It can be shocking to compare the kinds of answers you get in writing to the typical ones you get in oral responses in front of the rest of the panel.


Note to SKP, jury selection procedures vary in the United States. Federal courts don't usually let attorneys do much, but some judges let lawyers do more. State courts go from allowing very little to allowing anything. Some courts put ridiculous time limits on voir dire - like 20 minutes in a first degree murder. Where I practice, the judge asks a bunch of preliminary questions to the panel. Then we get to voir dire pretty much as long as we want. Usually we can get a jury by lunchtime without any time limits or anything.


Note to Andy - your experience sounds horrible. Like I said above, I tried a case last week and got a jury of 12 plus an alternate by 12:10 the first day of trial. We came back at 1:30, gave them some instructions and did openings. We got through too many witnesses the first day, so had to break early at 4:15 so more could be lined up. The next day we finished with the witnesses, loaded the jury on a bus to take them to the scene of some of the events didcussed in testimony, had some miscellaneous legal arguments, instructed them, closed, and gave them the case by 12:30. They had lunch on the county and then deliberated. It wasn't the most complex case or anything, but it was reasonably serious and important. The attorneys paid attention to jurors' answers and didn't strike people based on race or gender. I get pretty cynical about the system sometimes, but it sounds like you had a worse experience than I would expect. Even in a big city.


Anyway, I just think a lot of cases are too important to not let litigants have a say in jury selection. I wish we could actually pick a jury, but usually you're just looking to cull the herd of the horrible jurors. A skilled questioner can get a whole lot out of his time. I am not particularly good at voir dire and can still learn a lot about some jurors. A lot of times biased jurors lie or fly in under the radar, but I'd still like to have as few of these as possible.

02-09-2002, 01:18 AM
SKP, talking to jurors can be extremely valuable. It can also be very scary. It is sad to hear the basis of some decisions. Other times it is amazing how diligently they work to arrive at a good verdict. It is too bad you are not allowed to talk to jurors informally. I don't always talk to them and I never ask about the deliberations specifically. (Where I practice they get an instruction telling them it's OK to talk to the attorneys or not - the choice is theirs. They are told to respect other jurors and the deliberations in their comments) I just ask them what they thought of the trial and see what they say. But it is very valuable overall to be able to talk to them.

02-09-2002, 11:16 AM
Unlike my experience. Jury selection started(civil case) on time. Jury was selected in 2 hrs. Judge gave instructions, we went to lunch, trial started at 1. Concluded next day. Very little time wasted.


I thought we were supposed to be slow in Montana. Must be the traffic.

02-09-2002, 05:31 PM
EDITH: I've got jury duty, Archie!


GLORIA: Isn't that exciting, Daddy?


Archie: You're on a jury, huh?


EDITH: Yeah!


ARCHIE: Well, what's all the fuss about? (to Gloria) They want people like your mother down there, because they know they ain't got any pink-unscrewed ideas.


MIKE: You ever serve on a jury, Arch?


ARCHIE: (proudly) I've served my time on the jury.


MIKE: (surprised) You did?


EDITH: Well, almost. He was thrown off because he insulted the defense attorney.


ARCHIE: He asked me what I thought of capital punishment. And I told him.


EDITH: For thirty minutes.


ARCHIE: It's a proven fact that capital punishment is a well-known detergent to crime.


MIKE: That's false! Capital punishment has *never* been proven to be a "deterrent" to crime.


ARCHIE: (sternly) We believe it is in this house.


GLORIA: Are you in favor of capital punishment, Ma?


EDITH: (unsure) I guess so.


GLORIA: Mother!


EDITH: (backpedalling) Well, so long as it ain't too severe.


(later, Archie is reading his newspaper. He suddenly sits up, very agitated by something he read)


ARCHIE: Oh, good night nurse, look at this!


MIKE: What?


ARCHIE: "...jury on the Rodriguez trial..." (hands paper to Mike) Go on, look at it, it's right there, see for yourself.


MIKE: "The jury on the Rodriguez trial was sent back to deliberations today when the judge refused to accept a hung jury. It is rumored that ONE LONE JUROR is blocking a unanimous verdict."


ARCHIE: (sadly) "Lone Juror". It shoulda said, "Lone Dingbat".


Bobby

02-10-2002, 01:52 AM
I agree with the idea of weeding out people with preconceived notions or biases, but only a neutral party can do this. The attorneys, by definition, are biased, either in favor of conviction or acquittal. To allow them to take part in the process of picking an unbiased jury by definition makes the jury biased.

02-10-2002, 02:11 AM
I understand we want openminded jurors. But this cannot be done allowing a partisan person to take part in the jury selection. Only a neutral person, by definition, can select a neutral juror. Certainly a form could be devised that asks appropriate and relevant questions and the judge can then follow up with additional questions.


The attorneys are not attempting to weed out biased jurors. They're attempting to weed out jurors who are biased against them. They desire jurors who are biased so long as they are biased in their favor. The defense attorney, on the day I was dismissed (the judge did not like my ideas about circumstantial evidence, but that's a whole 'nother story), was not even listening or watching any of the potential jurors being questioned, he spent the whole afternoon looking back over his shoulder to see who was still left in the room. He objected to every white male without listenting to what they said; there were still 4-5 black females left in the pool.


One potential juror was an attorney. She did not handle criminal cases. The defense attorney asked her who she had more admiration for, Gerry Spence or Kenneth Starr. This is relevant? I was asked if I had ever handled a gun before [the victim was killed by a gun--I'm not making this up, HDPM. According to Professor Bellesiles, it happens fairly often /images/smile.gif]. This is relevant? Does one need to be a chicken to recognize an egg?


By the way, here was the timing on my second day. We reported at 9:15; judge ambled in at 9:45. Sidebar until 9:55. Morning break at 10:30. Called back in at 10:50. Judge comes in at 11:00. Lunch at 12:00. Thus there was an hour and 3/4 of work in the morning.


Back from lunch at 1:30. Judge comes in at 1:40. Afternoon break at 3:00. Called back in at 3:25. Close down at 4:15. Two hours and ten minutes worth of work in the afternoon for a grueling 3 hour and 55 minute work day.


"I just think a lot of cases are too important to not let litigants have a say in jury selection"


-I would argue just the opposite, for the same reason we don't let the players shuffle the cards We need a neutral party dealing to assure an unbiased hand.

02-10-2002, 03:01 AM
What neutral party would ask? What party is necessarily neutral? I have a lack of confidence in all the people in the criminal justice system because I have seen bad people in all the positions. But in most cases the system works OK somehow. Our system is designed to be adversarial, so you let the parties fight it out. (Prosecutors aren't supposed to get completely caught up in the fight, but that's easier said than done sometimes.) Anyway, I just don't know who you would have doing the picking. And believe me, I wouldn't trust a judge to do it.


BTW, what could you have said about circumstantial evidence that the judge didn't like? Did you mention your crappy anti-gun book in court? /images/smile.gif

02-10-2002, 04:44 AM
Capital punishment is a well known detergent to crime...I split my gut...man, that Bunker....most memorable television character there ever was .. by far...

02-10-2002, 04:52 AM
Who would be this neutral party? And how would you ever get such a neutral party to take this job seriously? Who would pay for his services? etc etc.


It's an adversarial system. A Lawyer no doubt will have no interest in dumping jurors who appear to be biased for his client's cause...but that's okay because it's the other guy's job to make sure that this fella doesn't get into the box.


The system is not perfect but it's plenty good.


That said, it's unfortunate that you had such a bad experience what with all the apparent wasted time etc. Like I said, That's never happened before in the trials that I have run. Perhaps, this was an isolated aberration. If not, the particular courthouse that you were in should probably look at revamping their systems and procedures.

02-10-2002, 11:08 AM

02-11-2002, 02:14 AM
No one is surprised that you got worked over.

02-11-2002, 02:36 AM
"Who would be this neutral party?"


The judge. He could get the job done if he worked a six-hour day, or, heaven forbid, an eight-hour day.


"Perhaps, this was an isolated aberration."


I hope so, but I doubt it. My dad practiced family law for many years and then was director of the Beverly Hills Bar Association for 12 years. Before I reported, he told me that the biggest problem is that nobody works a full day and a five minute thing usually takes three hours. How true.


By the way, I was entitled, in addition to the $15.00 per day, 15 cents a mile for travel reimbursement. I live 2 miles from the courthouse, so I will get travel reimbursement of 90 cents (they pay only for one-way travel, apparently not realizing you have to travel both ways). They told us that is costs them $2.50 to make out a check, so if we could forego the travel reimbursement, it would save the taxpayers a lot of money.


I wanted to do this. When I told them so, I was handed a double-sided form that it would have taken me another 15 minutes to fill out. I'm taking my 90 cents.

02-11-2002, 02:48 AM
"What neutral party would ask?"


The judge. I have more confidence in his ability to be impartial than than the attorneys, who are, by virtue of representing one side or the other in an adversarial process, not impartial.


I told the judge that I did not believe in circumstantial evidence, that evidence was either evidence or it was not. At the beginning, he tried to explain to us what circumstantial evidence was by 1) dropping a pencil on the ground in front of us; this he called direct evidence; and 2) apparently dropping the pencil on the ground behind his desk. We heard the pencil hit the ground, but then he told us it was a trick, he had actually dropped another pencil. This he called circumstantial evidence.


This I called lack of evidence. Since the original pencil had not actually hit the ground, the circumstantial evidence that it had was not evidence at all, but rather an educated, and incorrect, guess. I told the judge I would not make an educated, and therefore possibly incorrect, guess about whether or not a man had committed a murder. Thank you for your candor, Mr.Fox, you are excused.


Since we were all asked whether or not we had ever handled a gun, I was holding my crappy anti-gun book as my ace-in-the-hole, in case my circumstantial evidence argument failed.

02-11-2002, 03:25 AM
"most memorable television character there ever was .. by far..."


I agree. I've been watching the old shows the last few weeks. The other night was an episode where Edith is going through menopause. I remember laughing hysterically when I first saw it, and I laughed just as hard this time.


I remember how shocking the show was when it first came on. Archie belched, went to the bathroom, and was bigoted. Carol O'Connor, nevertheless, had to make this character likeable to the public, and he obviously succeeded. Probably the most important show in the history of television.

02-11-2002, 03:22 PM
Court here begins at 10 am. We break at 11 for 15 minutes and then go till 12:30. We then go from 2 to 3 and break for 15 minutes. We finish between 3:15 and 4 pm.


That's 4 hours of testimony.


Lay persons generally think that this is a short workday...NOT!


I can tell you that my timesheets during a week when I am in trial invariably has 12 plus hours on it per day. That's just billable time which means that I am probably in the office for 13 or 14 hours. It's hard work to prepare for 4 hours of testimony. If actual court time were to be 6 hours per day, I literally would not be able to get any ZZZZ's whatsoever during the trial week. Furthermore, just because I am doing for a trial for John Doe does not mean that my other clients' work gets put off...they continue to expect that things will be attended to on their files.


As well, appaering in court is a stressful experience for most witnesses and it's simply not possible for them to remain focussed enough to give testimony for longer than 4 hours in a day.


Judges also do not have it easy in terms of absorbing testimony for longer than 4 hours. Oh...and I doubt very much that the judge's day is over at 4 pm or that it only starts at 10 am. In addition to presiding over trials, they also have other duties such as writing reasons for judgment, appearing in chambers in the morning to hear interlocutory applications or pretrail conferences in other matters, continuing legal education so that they are up to date on the law etc etc. In a jury trial, the most common grounds of appeal relate to the judge's charge to the jury. Preparing that charge also takes time and has to be done under trying circumstances i.e. when all the evidence is in and the judge has no more than a few hours or perhaps overnight to consider and draft his charge to the jury.


Andy, believe me bud, lawyers in general are overworked. I post a lot here. I do so because it breaks the monotony of work but I make up for the lost time by invariably coming in to the office either on Saturday or on Sunday and sometimes both days. If I could do it all over again, I wouldn't pick law. The hours you put in are too much.

02-11-2002, 04:56 PM
I understand and appreciate that lawyers put in long hours. But so much of it is useless and/or duplication. I just settled out of court with a sales rep who claimed we owed him money. The settlement is a 12 page document, simply incomprehnsible to a layman. I'm sure it took a long time to draw this up.


The most famous and important freedom of the press trial in colonial America, the John Peter Zenger trial, took 3 hours. Surely somewhere between that and what we have now, is a happy medium.

02-11-2002, 05:00 PM
I am not biased about the case in question. If the man committed the crime, I would like to see him found guilty; if he did not, I would like to see him found innocent.


This is not true for the attorneys. The attorney representing the defendant wants to see him found innocent regardless of whether or not he is. And the prosecuting attorney wants to see him found guilty regardless of whether or not he is.


It is not a question of whether a person is, in general, biased. It is a question of letting peolple who have a vested interest in the outcome of a trial deciding who should be the judges.

02-11-2002, 06:12 PM
A settlement agreement and release should normally be no more than 2 pages consisting of some 10 paragraphs....I am not quite sure what kind of unnecessary boiler plate yours has. Besides, drafting those types of documents is generally not time consuming as you work with precedents.


I simply cannot imagine a 3 hour trial except in small claims court. The world and the law have become a lot more complex since the days of the Zenger trial you speak of.

02-11-2002, 06:20 PM
"The world and the law have become a lot more complex since the days of the Zenger trial you speak of."


No doubt true. But I still think there's a lot of wasted time, energy and, money. Perhaps this is an inevitable feature of life in the big city in the big country.


Thanks for all your carefully considered responses.

02-11-2002, 11:14 PM
The prosecutor should not want to convict someone who didn't do it. I know many don't have that attitude, but a lot do. The prosecutor should be like a second judge in there. Sometimes it is only the prosecutor sticking up for the rights of the defendant. Don't laugh, I have seen it several times.

02-11-2002, 11:19 PM
The trial day might be short, but the jury's time should be maximized. I think that if Andy had been in an efficient courtroom where stuff got done when the jury was there he wouldn't be complaining. From his description the court had no desire to streamline things or get work done. If the jury is there 5 hours and hears 4.5 hours of testimony, that is fine. if they're there all day and nothing happens, that is no good. I'd hate to try a case to an angry, frustrated jury.


And I know the jurors don't care how late you work preparing. :-)

02-12-2002, 01:36 AM
Point taken. But he is called the prosecutor. He's prosecuting the accused for the crime. I still don't see how he, or the defendant's attorney, as partisans on the issue of guilt or innocence, can be deciders of who the judgers of the accused will be.


My father is an attorney and I have a nephew who just passed the bar. So, contrary to what one might think about my sometimes facetoius anti-lawyer comments, there are good people who are also lawyers (you and skp, for example). It's only the Richard Nixons and Bill Clintons who give lawyers a bad name. /images/wink.gif