Slashdot Mirror
Computer Geeks and Jury Duty in the US?
Stan Schwarz asks: "I just spent a day doing jury duty here in Los Angeles, and it was a colossal waste of time. I've been called for jury duty five times over the last 18 years, and I -never- get picked for a jury. I answer the five questions (name, where you live, marital status, occupation, spouse's occupation) and they throw me out. My lawyer neighbor says this is because they don't want computer people because we think logically and are not emotional. Have other slashdot readers had similar experiences with the judicial system? Or should I just develop a complex about this?"
When the jury is being sworn in, I do not raise my hand and have had to ask several times (I keep getitng called over and over) if it is okay to affirm I am telling the truth instead of searing. As a Quaker (yes, there are many Quakers who work with technology -- we're not the ones in horses and buggys), my belief is that I should always do my best to tell the truth, and swearing an oath (which, by the way, the Bible says not to do -- although I don't hold the Bible as inerrant at all), implies that one is telling the truth only at certain times and that it is okay to NOT tell the truth at other times. Almost every time this has come up, I see one of the lawyers making a mark on paper when I ask this question. I can't be sure, but I suspect that's when I'm struck.
And the ironic thing is that, as a Quaker, I would feel it to be of the utmost importance to listen to both sides without prejudice and to value both sides equally as I weight the facts.
In Richmond, VA, they take jurors from lists -- voting registration, property tax lists, driver's licenses, etc. I don't know if it is still true, but this used to mean that if you were on a number of these lists, you were more likely to be chosen, since your name was on the master jury list once for each of the other lists it was on (this is what I was told by someone working for the Jury Officer). I think the court should be required to have 80% of all eligible jurors serve before a juror is called back. I'm 40, and I was called 2 times while in college (given exemption because I was living out-of-town), once after that, again after I moved to a surrounding county (exempted since I no longer lived in the city), and, after moving back into Richmond, I've been called another 3 times. That's 4 times since I wsa 18 that I've served and 3 times I was called when I was not living in the district. While I try to maintain an even and calm viewpoint, I've gotten so many notices for jury duty, that I wonder if I'd able to make a dispassionate decision if I did sit on a case.
But if you haven't, you can't really make sense of it, so you just have to buy whatever the judge instructs you to.
Which begs the question, what, exactly, is the *point* of the law in the first place? If normal people can't understand it, how can they be expected to follow it? If the law doesn't mean what it looks like it means (requires the judge to interperet it) then why have actual writeen laws in the first place? Why not just have everyone come before a judge once a year and have him decide arbitrarily if you should be a free man or locked up.
"Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"
My first time doing jury service was also in Los Angeles (downtown? Out in the Valley? -- maybe that makes a difference). This was a couple of years ago when you had to serve the full two weeks, none of this one-day and you're out stuff. After 4 days of playing CivII on my laptop in the assembly room, they asked for volunteers to go out to Van Nuys. I volunteered because it was closer to where I was living, I'm not there 20 minutes when I get called for a panel (wasn't called for a panel for 4 days downtown), they ask the std. questions -- I don't get excused, was foreman of my jury. I was clear enough about my role in the industry that I had to explain to the judge exactly what I did, and apparently that wasn't enough.
YMMV, of course -- and perhaps it was just random chance. All I know is that I missed out on 6 more days of CivII. Seriously, I actually enjoyed it -- I wasn't serving with the brightest bulbs in the in the county, and the case wasn't terribly difficult (had one guy that as soon as the door was closed said, "Ok, he's guilty - where's the forms").
Nowadays, with jury duty being 1 day/1 trial, there's really no excuse for folks not to serve. I know it's cliched and everything, but if I was on trial for something, I'd feel better knowing that there were slashdot folks on the jury, as opposed to 12 Angry Postal Workers.
Ok, maybe not.
I work for a small engineering company, and I always wondered why people there would say in our weekly meetings "I've got jury duty, should be back before lunch." Turns out that most of the technical people there have had the same experience: when the lawyers find out what you do/what you're trained for, you're booted and fast.
I've been told it's because technical people think logically and aren't as easily swayed by the lawyers, who often rely on surging emotions to win their case. But I think too it's because of our natures: as a juror you're not supposed to do any external research on your own. But suppose it's a case about a collapsed bridge and you're a civil engineer on the jury. Are you going to be able to resist? Or for those of us with some background in physics, if you were on a jury for a traffic accident, could you resist pulling out the ol' conservation of momentum, 2D mechanics, etc.? Maybe we're just harder to control.
My father was called for jury duty frequently, but never sat on a jury in over 30 years. He was an accountant and an engineer by training, so defense attorneys did not want him in criminal cases because he had been trained to think in terms of the facts. He worked for an insurance company, so plaintiffs' attorneys did not want him in civil cases because there was usually an insurance angle to where the money would come from.
easy to get out of jury duty...Just say you believe in Jury Nullification...
0 7J uryNullification.html
http://www.greenmac.com/eagle/ISSUES/ISSUE23-9/
and for most of us, it's true...(unless you believe that Law always equals Justice and the movites of superiors should NEVER be questioned..)
basically, you're saying if you believe a law is BS, you have the right to acquit the defendant even if legally, the crime was committed...a good example would acquiting a guy who smoked pot because you believe the war on drugs is BS persecution.
sometimes it goes the wrong way (good ol' boys who are acquited in the south of lynchings...) - but it is a right of the founding fathers...
Lawyers HATE these guys, and in fact, if you believe in this and don't declare it...they can hit you for contempt of court...
But I've contempt of our court system for a while now...
RB
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ah honey, we're all resplendent - Bill Mallonee
[Posting anonymously for obvious reasons. Don't want some guy getting out of jail and coming after me :)]
I served on a jury once, and it was one of the hardest things I've ever had to do. Although it was interesting to get a glimpse inside the system, it's a very weighty feeling to be responsible for judging someone guilty or innocent and possibly condemn them to prison for life.
They never asked me about my occupation. I just happened to have the second lowest juror number of everyone there, so I was one of the first called up. The way it works where I live is the jurors are called up in order and the defense and prosecution can either accept you for the jury or decline. They keep going until they have 13 people (12 jurors and one alternate). They each have a limited number of declines (maybe five?) so there is an incentive to take the first few people and save the declines for when they really need them.
It was a sad case, involving armed robbery, carjacking, and a poor guy being locked in his own trunk. There was, IMHO, not a lot of direct evidence to tie the defendant to the crime, at least according to my logical geek mind, but enough to convict him according to the law. No one was able to testify that they actually saw the robber's face, just heard his voice. The clincher was when the suspected accomplice testified against the defendant. His testimony was crucial, but he was so reluctant to testify against his friend that he just danced around the questions and only at the end said that the defendant was the guy. There was also some insinuations that he'd only agreed to testify as part of a plea bargain, so his testimony was somewhat suspect.
We found him guilty, but it was a wrenching decision. Props to the judge for being very fair throughout. Afterward, he came to the jury chamber and told us that he thought we made the right decision. He told us that, depending on how he structured the sentence, the guy could go to jail for the rest of his life. While I'm glad that a guilty man will be punished it was very difficult to have it happen through my hands. Someone asked how old the guy was and then, only after the trial was over, the judge was able to tell us that he was only 19. It was like the air went out of the room. 19??? And we'd just played a part in sending him to jail for life. Of course it was his own deeds that he was punished for, but if you take it seriously, it's hard to have the decision rest on your shoulders.
I'm glad that I did my duty and that, for the most part, justice was served. I'm sorry for the victim and his ordeal. But it was a heavy experience and I don't ever want to have to do it again.
1. Bring a laptop on which you can do work. If your job cannot be done on a laptop with no network connection then you are screwed and should take the alternate approach, finding excuses to get out of jury duty.
2. Find the outlet in the jury pool room, and sit next to it. Arrive early if you have to. Your laptop battery will not keep you going long enough, so you must plan to run on AC power. If there is only one outlet, you must not let anyone else sit next to it. To avoid problems, you may want to arrive early or bring an extension cord.
3. Pretend to be an idiot during voir dire. This is crucial. Courts take a dim view of software development work in the jury box. The place you want to spend your time is the jury pool room, not the courtroom. It's easy to minimize the time you spend in the courtroom. During the voir dire process, be sure to express at least one of the following opinions whenever any question is asked of you:
You may still get picked for a jury despite your best efforts. If this happens to you, make sure you have something dry and technical to read, like a printout of some API documentation. (Don't bring anything more interesting along or you'll end up reading that instead.) Most judges don't care if you catch up on your reading during the procedural lulls that consume most of the court's time, when your attention isn't needed. People read romance novels on juries all the time. But I think an open laptop would be pushing it.
4. Don't make any friends. Remember, you're going to jury duty to get lots of work done, not to socialize! The reason jury duty is great is that it forces you to work because there's nothing else to do and no one interesting to talk to! No meetings, phone calls, emails, or Slashdot. You have to take advantage of this valuable time. If you make friends in the jury pool room, you defeat the entire purpose of not trying to get out of jury duty!
Seriously, I got called for jury duty and I got an amazing amount of work done that week. It was unpleasant and uncomfortable as hell while I was there, but afterwards it was definitely worth it.
I'm a software engineer and I got picked for a jury a few weeks ago in southern California. There was also one other programmer on the jury. As it happened, the two of us hung the jury. We were the only ones that, despite believing the guy did what he was accused of, felt that there wasn't enough evidence to convince us beyond a reasonable doubt. Most of the other jurors wanted to convict the guy and would look at the evidence from perspectives that would allow them to do that. In other words, for them if it was possible that he did it given the evidence, then he was guilty.
In California, at least, this is further confused by the jury instructions we were given. In california, circumstantial evidence is allowed, and the jury instructions state something like "if there are two explanations, and one is reasonable and one is not, you must accept the reasonable explanation." But what it doesn't say is that the evidence must convince you beyond a reasonable doubt that the reasonable scenario actually happened. The other jurors took this to mean that if they felt the prosection's story was more reasonable than the defendent's story, then they could convict him. We finally got an opportunity to get the judge to clarify these instructions and explain that any decision must be proved beyond a reasonable doubt by the evidence, but by then the others had already made up their mind.
All in all, it was a very disturbing experience. All I can say is that if I'm ever accused of a crime, I pray that there is a programmer on my jury!
Remember that even seemingly minor disputes are very important to the people involved!
Juries protect the rights of people who are accused of crimes, and they protect injured people from insurance companies that won't pay claims (the defendant in any given civil case is nearly always an insurance company). Today's Bushie-Republican judges almost always rule in favor of the rich and powerful, and against the poor and weak, no matter what the merits of the case. Someday you or someone you love might actually benefit from having 12 ordinary people in the box!
Yes, computer professionals are thought of as unfeeling and/or unable to assign a dollar value to things that can't be objectively quantified, say, "pain and suffering" damages in civil injury cases. The more I read Slashdot, the more I am convinced that this stereotype is TOTALLY, 100% VALID.
Yes, the system was designed in an age long ago when jurors' time was less valuable than today; and there are many rules that don't make sense, even to many lawyers. The only consolation I can offer is that most of the rules are there for a reason, lawyers are not exempt from jury duty (at least not in California), and you are performing a valuable public service that you would really appreciate if you were in the other guy's shoes.
IAAL, and I get bounced out of the blue chairs even quicker than you do.