Jury Duty

[Vaevictis]

I got summoned for state and federal jury duty within the next few weeks.

I wonder if the plaintiff/prosecutor or the judge will take umbrage when I mention that I believe that jury nullification is a power and right of the jury in light of Bushell's case, the Zenger libel case and the 9th amendment.

[Tailwind]

Prolly just excuse you.

[Widescreen]

Listen here, law dog. Big words just don't go around here. Savvy?

[olevetonahill]

Ive NEVAR been called ,
Just tell em you used to ba cop , You are outta there;)

[Vaevictis]

Well, it's not so much that I want to get out of jury duty, I just don't want to sit through the whole mess for nothing. If they're going to have a problem with it, I'd rather they dismiss me to begin with.

[OUDoc]

Somehow, I got a patient of mine out of jury duty by writing a letter stating that she gets diarrhea when stressed. :confused:

[Mjcpr]

Did you lie or does it really stress the **** out of her?

[TopDaugIn2000]

I was called in OK county not long ago, nearly a year after I moved back to Norman. I took my utility bills to prove my Cleveland Co. residence and they excused me. I took the rest of the day off and chilled.

[OUDoc]

Did you lie or does it really stress the **** out of her?
Well, I never checked, but she says it does. I really don't want to test the theory, since she'd poop all over my exam table.

[TopDaugIn2000]

I have mild case of that problem too, not that anyone wanted to know.
never thought of it getting me out of jury duty though!

[Mjcpr]

I've got your test results back, do you mind wearing a diaper?

Oh ****, it's lupus. Is it lupus?

[OUDoc]

I have mild case of that problem too, not that anyone wanted to know.
never thought of it getting me out of jury duty though!Irritable bowel syndrome is fairly common.

[Sooner24]

I got summoned for state and federal jury duty within the next few weeks.

I wonder if the plaintiff/prosecutor or the judge will take umbrage when I mention that I believe that jury nullification is a power and right of the jury in light of Bushell's case, the Zenger libel case and the 9th amendment.


He will probably just think you are being a smartass.

[GottaHavePride]

I've never been called. Which is nice, because if they called me I'd probably have to drive back to Wichita for it.

[LoyalFan]

Since I firmly believe in capital punishment for a wide variety of offenses (See: Jaywalking, animal, child, or elderly abuse, using handicapped spaces when not properly tagged, putting on airs, etc,) I find it difficult to sit in a jury box without leaping over the partition and strangling the SOB AND his sleazy lawyer.
Sooooo...here's how I get excused:
When the pool members are asked if anyone has previous trial experience I raise my paw. Asked for details, I respond "Yes, as an Officer of The Line of Battle, US Army, I often sat on, or served as president of, Courts(Yes, with an "s")-Martial boards. Justice was certain, swift, and sure. I miss that!"
Out the door and off to Happy Hour in 30 seconds or less.
Once, while on active service, and needing to be in the field rather than in the courtroom, I switched the crossed sabers on my lapels for Military Police crossed horse pistols, thus morphing from Armored Cavalry to MP. When the defense counsel saw the peestoles, I was instantly challenged off the board and happily switched brass and climbed back into my Panzer. If I had gotten caught at that...hooooooo boy!
The Happy Times!

LF
Turret Tenant, Emeritus

[MamaMia]

I would like to serve on a jury but they always excuse me when they find out that I did investigative work for the DAs office for 10 years. My husband got called to serve during Red River Shootout week back in 2002. Thank goodness we have an OU grad attorney. Somehow he got my husbands obligation postponed.

[jk the sooner fan]

amazing how many will complain about the system, and then when called to be a part of it, look for a way to get out of it

i was voir dired from my one jury experience, but i never mentioned i was a cop....becuase they never asked

[MamaMia]

amazing how many will complain about the system, and then when called to be a part of it, look for a way to get out of it

i was voir dired from my one jury experience, but i never mentioned i was a cop....becuase they never askedIf you are lumping my husband in your group, then you should know that he merely wanted his jury service to be postponed, not canceled. Maybe it would help if they would give people a little more notice.

I'm surprised that they didn't ask if you had ever worked in law enforcement. Its been my experience that they usually do.

[Jerk]

amazing how many will complain about the system, and then when called to be a part of it, look for a way to get out of it



Fun hater.

I got called in right after I turned 18. I had long blond hair past my shoulders, and looked like a surfer boy. The D.A. dismissed me. What he didn't realize was that I was probably the biggest redneck "let's hang em'" person there.

[Vaevictis]

Actually, the last time I was summoned, I got dismissed by the judge for being "too quiet."

The acoustics of the room were such that when I spoke in my normal speech voice, everyone *except* the defense lawyer could hear what I was saying. After the 6th time that lawyer objected, the judge dismissed me.

It would have been hilarious if it hadn't been on the third day and I had to miss three days of work just to be dismissed.

[Boarder]

I was on a jury last year. It was fun. After a week, we went to deliberations and it took about 30 seconds to find out every juror thought the plaintiff was full of it. We had all been dying to talk about it so we took 30 minutes to laugh at how stupid the case was.


Unless there was something really pressing, I'd serve again in a heartbeat.

[Octavian]

Homer: Jury duty?! I'll see that Quimby boy hanged for this!

[picasso]

I did it, and was excused from the trial after being interviewed in front of everyone and their dog. it was quite humiliating but very easy to get out of if you wish.
just tell the defense what they don't want to hear.

[sanantoniosooner]

just tell the defense what they don't want to hear.
I like big butts and I can not lie?

[picasso]

I did tell the lawyer I liked big booty. and he agreed with me.

[william_brasky]

http://youtube.com/watch?v=1E5Z6LXquMQ

Some say cucumbers taste better than pickles.

[jk the sooner fan]

If you are lumping my husband in your group, then you should know that he merely wanted his jury service to be postponed, not canceled. Maybe it would help if they would give people a little more notice.

I'm surprised that they didn't ask if you had ever worked in law enforcement. Its been my experience that they usually do.

it was a comment in general, not pointed at anybody in particular

[Frozen Sooner]

I've never been called. Which is nice, because if they called me I'd probably have to drive back to Wichita for it.

I don't know about Wichita, but I was excused from serving in Anchorage once because I had to be back in Norman for class in a couple of days. The judge said that was a great example of what she WOULD excuse people for and that everyone else asking to be excused should have a reason at least that good.

I was given notice a couple of years ago but my group never got called.

I wouldn't really mind serving if I was called, though.

[BigRedJed]

I've served twice; once on a county jury (lawsuit), once in federal court (criminal wire fraud). Both cases took about a week. I really enjoyed serving both times, except for the outcome of the federal case. In both cases I believe that we found correctly, but in the fraud case justice was not served.

I always said that I would never want to be a part of a jury that awarded a huge amount of money, or a jury that let a scumbag off on a technicality, and I ended up serving on both.

The lawsuit case I ended up being really happy with, though. It was a one-man software developer suing a huge firm. He had been hired by the state to write some customized software, utilizing the database made by the big guys he was suing. The big guys were hired to do peer review of his work, and they ended up working an under-the-table deal with one of their points of contact at the state, which illegally took the business away from the little guy they were supposed to be doing peer review of. It was really clear what had happened, not to mention nobody, I mean NOBODY with the state agency he was working for would say a bad word about him, his work or the product he produced. We awarded huge damages ($1.7 million, if I remember right), but it was really easy to document the loss of income, business damages, etc.

In the case where we let the scumbag off on a technicality, I was even the foreman. The case was against a California-based human ****stain that was a part of a long distance telephone scam that targeted the elderly, ripping them off. He and his cronies took a sweet little lady from OKC for her entire life savings (six figures). The prosecution made the case iron-clad. There was no doubt whatsoever that the group did it, and that he was a part of the scam. There was no doubt that he personally had made calls, and was intimately involved in the con. But the prosecution also only charged him for a couple of specific phone calls that he absolutely could not have made. They proved the case beyond, not just a reasonable doubt, but beyond a shadow of a doubt, only they proved it on phone calls that they didn't end up charging him for.

When we got into deliberations, it became clear that we were, to a person, 100% convinced of his guilt. As we worked through all of the evidence, though, we eventually realized that, following the law as it was explained to us, and the judge's instructions, there was no way we could find him guilty of any of the charges. It was one of the most desperate, empty feelings I have ever experienced. We were pretty furious at the prosecutor in the case. It just seemed so careless and unneccessary, when he had an abundance of easily-proveable charges to choose from. Not only was our time wasted, but tens (if not hundreds) of thousands of dollars had been spent investigating and prosecuting the case. Not to mention that some California thugs with gang affiliations got off scott-free after robbing a sweet little Oklahoma City lady blind.

I'm not ashamed to say that I had real tears rolling down my face when they read our verdict, and I watched the look of satisfaction on the scumbag's face and the look of despair on the victim's.

Overall, though, I found serving to be really rewarding and worth doing. I'd be happy to do it again.

[OUTromBoNado]

I got called for federal jury duty in Tulsa right before my senior year at OU. Thankfully, I was leaving for school the day I was supposed to report, so I was excused.

[Okla-homey]

When we got into deliberations, it became clear that we were, to a person, 100% convinced of his guilt. As we worked through all of the evidence, though, we eventually realized that, following the law as it was explained to us, and the judge's instructions, there was no way we could find him guilty of any of the charges.

You could have done a "reverse OJ jury" and found him guilty anyway. The kumstien would eventually have gotten a new trial, but of course, at that second trial, the state would have realized its goof and amended its complaint.:D

[Vaevictis]

Well, I got up, hauled myself in, arrive, sign in, and am told that they've cancelled it today due to them being uncertain about the weather.

I'm absolutely thrilled.

[BigRedJed]

You could have done a "reverse OJ jury" and found him guilty anyway. The kumstien would eventually have gotten a new trial, but of course, at that second trial, the state would have realized its goof and amended its complaint.:D
Yeah, we thought about doing that. Problem is, if we intentionally created a verdict that we knew was wrong, we became part of the problem. Like OJ's jury.

I'm still ****ed at that prosecutor.

[BigRedJed]

What's crazy is that the defense attorney didn't even go down the road we ultimately did. I can't remember the angle he was using (this was 6 or 7 years ago), but differentiating between the calls the schmuck made and the calls he was charged for wasn't a part of his strategy, a strategy we ignored. Neither team of attorneys did their jobs especially well on this one.

But we figured out the disparity really quickly on our own during deliberations. After doing that, we sent a question to the judge regarding whether we could consider finding him guilty for the phone calls which were proven in testimony instead of the ones that were specified in the charges. He sent word back that we could not, so that was that.

:mad:

[sooneron]

When I show up I just tell them that I am prejudiced towards all races.

[TexasLidig8r]

Jed... did you rake the prosecuting attorney across the coals either in court or the hallway afterwards?

[BigRedJed]

Jed... did you rake the prosecuting attorney across the coals either in court or the hallway afterwards?
In the judge's chambers. To the judge. We (jurors) were all invited into his chambers after the verdict. We absolutely unloaded on the prosecutors and told the judge how we felt. We asked for his opinion, too. After my two stints on jury duty I have come to the conclusion that judges either can't or would prefer not to discuss their personal opinions with the jurors afterward. But I got the general vibe that he felt our reasoning was sound, and that we did the right thing following that line of reasoning.

I also felt that he believed, as did we, that the guy was guilty as sin and deserved to be found so. We let him know about our frustration, and he basically told us that was unfortunately the way of the world and for the justice system to work correctly juries had to approach things the way we did.

The judge also let us in on how overworked the prosecution is on cases such as these, and how unfortunately stuff like that routinely slips through the cracks. It was a real eye-opener. The things they missed on seemed so fundamental. I felt like I could have put together a better case than they did, without a day of law school under my belt.

I'm not sure if we had the option to have a statement read or not, but we didn't know about it if we did. We only presented the verdict as "not guilty" of the various charges, and it was read by an officer of the court.

Unfortunately, the prosecutor was nowhere to be found when we left the judge's chambers.

The judge in the other case was more forthcoming and made it even more apparent that she agreed with our finding, even if she couldn't say it out loud. Her only question revolved around how we reached the number in the award. It was a really odd number, not rounded off or anything. But we did it based on some really basic formulas that were presented to us, and some easily documentable financials. It was all pretty cut and dried, and she understood after we explained it.

I ran into the plaintiff's attorney some months after the trial. We recognized each other and he invited me to lunch. They were preparing the case for the appeal, and wanted to know exactly which parts of their case was the most compelling to us. It seems the award had even made national news on some level.

[TheHumanAlphabet]

I'm too edumacated for jury duty. My Ph.D. in Engineering with my "keen" mind and understanding of statistics, science and persuasion will keep me forever off a jury. Them high follutin' lawyers will not be able to hood wink me into thinking their way and I can persuade the jury with my OU edumacation to think for themselves as well...;)