Comment by tombrossman | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tombrossman | Hacker News Reader

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If you ever get the chance to do jury duty go for it. I used to hear people talking about how to get out of it but I was curious enough to show up and go along with the process the first time I was called. It was quite interesting, and at the time I was employed at a company that paid 100% daily wages if you were selected for a trial.

The defendant was accused of stealing a car and I had been the victim of car theft before, so I figured I was out quickly. After I told them about the theft the defence lawyer just asked 'were you traumatized?' and I laughed and said 'no, just annoyed. I got my car back a week later undamaged'.

Couldn't believe it but I was seated on jury for trial, and I got to see how the police worked it and learned about 'shaved keys', etc. Fascinating. I'm not really pro-police but I remember wishing the detective who caught the defendant had worked my case, where the thief was never found.

The personality dynamics of the deliberations are really interesting, too. The defendant was a young Hispanic man and our foreman was an old white guy whose first words were 'Well, he's guilty why waste time talking about it?' Total shocker, the others were furious with him and shouting and arguing, etc. Great stuff. I grabbed the evidence bag and looked through everything, deciding that I'd be pretty good at stealing cars if I ever needed to.

The tl;dr of this is that if you are a fan of short stories (like a good Kurt Vonnegut story) then jury duty is definitely for you. After doing it I'm certain I would go do it again and I highly recommend it.

That's nice that you get paid the same either way, but I've been called twice - once while I was in school where if I didn't spend time studying I didn't pass, and more importantly, I wouldn't learn the information. I got called again a couple years later where I was working independently on my own software projects, where if I didn't ship, I didn't get paid.

I took the obvious rational choice of using every trick in the book to successfully get out of it both times. The alternative would be a potentially unbounded chunk of my time gone, and that much farther behind on my goals. Large companies can get a kind of diversification, but I'm sure jury duty hits small companies hard as well.

The system is broken. I get the need for civilian juries, but the cost should be more fairly distributed by encouraging jurors to show up by paying jurors a reasonable wage rather than the pittance of a couple dollars a day that is currently paid in most jurisdictions, and at the same time, let people opt out by just saying "I don't want to" without having to give a reason (or better yet, opt in instead). We'd raise wage high enough to get some target percentage (like, say, 50%) of called citizens motivated enough to show up, or possibly compensate jurors pro rata based off of 120% of their average declared income on the previous 2-3 years of tax returns.

We'd have to raise taxes by a small amount to cover these payouts, but that's completely reasonable as we're shifting the burden from randomly chosen individuals of whom unreasonable demands are made today to a more broad and even and shallow tax base. It's the same reason we pay road work crews a wage rather than randomly selecting every week who cleans the roads. And if we pay enough to still get 50% of jurors showing up completely volitionally, we'd still avoid the problem of "professional jurors" who would try to game the system by serving on many juries.

Letting people opt out or opt in would destroy the entire point of a jury. It'd turn what needs to be a representative random sample of the population into selection bias.

I think that a better solution would be for small companies, independent contractors, students, etc., to buy into an insurance pool; such that when they are selected for jury duty, they can be fairly compensated.

Yea, that's basically what I suggested; I called it taxes.

What we do now bears little relationship to "a representative random sample of the population". We deliberately rule out everybody who has any relevant knowledge or preexisting opinions about anything related to the case or the legal system, thereby making the sample far from random.

(I believe in Jury Nullification - meaning I think the jury has the responsibility to judge whether the law itself is unjust and if so refuse to convict under it - and I object on moral grounds to a fair number of existing laws. As a result of having these views, I have never been able to serve on a jury. I would only be able to serve if I lied to the judge about my beliefs.)

There's already a persistent bias in representation in that people like me who have places to be and things to do are opting out.

These are great points but I think 'economic hardship' is a valid reason to give, no? If you tell the judge your situation and ask to be excused (or defer it repeatedly). It sounds like you probably tried this but I mean tell them straight out 'I'm self-employed and at X days of this I no longer have rent/food/etc'.

Failing that the magic words are 'can you please explain about jury nullification and whether it is legal?'. It is my understanding that the jury nullification issue is toxic and will almost certainly get you dismissed.

Let's hypothetically say I'm a small business owner who doesn't get paid unless I put in the work, but I'm simultaneously a multi-millionaire putting away $500k/year because I work so much. Do you think a judge looking at my financial statements would agree that I have an economic hardship?

On the other hand, let's look at somebody working a salaried position who gets paid the same either way, whether he goes to work or serves on a jury. That's great for him, except he's also my employee, and now my (small) business takes the hit in identical expenses with less productivity.

I've heard the trick about jury nullification, and I would probably pull that card if I ever actually got into the courtroom, but I shouldn't need to go through all that effort, and what about the people who don't know about it?

It's been said that the only people serving on the jury are people who can't figure out how to get out of it. Having successfully gotten out of it twice with little to no effort, I don't believe that's true. Rather, I think the people serving on the jury are those who have nowhere else better to be. I don't mean to be immodest, but I think I'm a bright person, and I think that I would be a constructive addition to jury, but I and people like me just have better things to do.

Advice I got from a lawyer friend is that getting out of jury is very easy - just ignore the summons entirely and nothing will happen.

You correct that they won't accept any excuse but the system mails summons more or less at random and so the summonses go to many non-existent persons. Moreover, a letter isn't legally binding by itself - you can always say you never got it but since they get to so non-shows, the system never bothers to hunt-down those who never show.

About 25 years ago, I read about a sheriff simply rounding up an elevator full of persons at a county building when the jury pool was low. That is an exceptional case, but I believe that jurisdictions vary in how hard they chase no-shows.

That's the wrong message to send society and unfairly punishes those who go out of their way to conform to rules they don't agree with.

I have heard that this varies by jurisdiction.

I'm currently serving on a grand jury for a 4 week term, hearing numerous cases every day. The level of perspective it has provided into the legal system has been fascinating, and seeing all of these different cases unfold through witness testimony is a really interesting experience, though it is often emotionally draining.

The flip side of my situation is that, as a rather recently hired engineer at a young and quickly moving startup, it's not really a replacement for my job this month, as it is for most of the others I sit with. It's a second job, unless I want to fall behind and lose a lot of what I've worked for.

I'm sure its a lot easier of a decision when your work is paying you full salary for it. Although, I'm not sure how common/uncommon that is.

Probably depends on how long it lasts.

Jury duty was the absolute worst experience of my entire life, bar none. (yes, yes, first world problem).

The first three weeks were sort of interesting. The week in seclusion for deliberation was awful. It was so stressful I couldn't sleep, I was a complete wreck. You spend 14 hours a day cooped up in a small room along with people you slowly start to hate. I get really angry just thinking about it.

Trials (and subsequent deliberations) that last that long -- though there the kind that get popular attention -- are pretty extreme outliers.

They happen, but they are far from the norm. (IIRC, most trials last, including deliberations, less than a week, and many are done in 1-2 days, deliberation included.)

I once had to do jury duty for the Federal Court of Maryland. In that case you are slated to call in for a day or two every week for a month. At the time they were starting to select a jury for a public corruption trial that was estimated to last for 12-15 weeks plus time for deliberations. Because the case was so public you would also be sequestered the entire time. One of the happiest days of my life was when I wasn't selected for that trial.

A couple weeks later I did have to sit on a trial for 2 days for a traffic offense because the person decided it was a good idea to let the police chase him back and forth between Maryland and DC.

Yours sounds much more interesting than mine. An ambulance chaser who conned a woman into suing the kid who rear-ended her and happened to be driving dad's BMW.

That said, I'd do it again for sure. Partially out of civic duty and partially because, despite mine not being altogether exciting, it was still fairly interesting for my curious mind.

Whether it's worth doing, or even possible to do, is highly dependent upon who you are.

As a scientist, I appear to be essentially banned from being on a jury. The last time I was there, my experience consisted of wasting two days sitting in a courthouse, surrounded by people trying to escape from jury duty, only to be dismissed from a jury by the prosecution immediately after stating my profession. In total I said less than ten words. Everything I have been told by others in academia seems to go along with this: scientists are immediately dismissed.

So what's the point of my going? I'd like to be on a jury, and think it's an important civic duty, but the end result is an utter waste of my time that achieves nothing, for which the court insultingly tries to "compensate" me with $15 per day.

Don't leave us hanging - did your jury find him guilty or not? Was that in line with your thoughts?

It wasn't that important to the story but the guy was caught with the car, and as it was his 'third strike' in California a jury trial was required (rather than a plea agreement). There was considerable evidence submitted but barely touched on in court to prove he did it so we found him guilty.

After the verdict was read the judge explained more about the case and more info came out which 100% confirmed his guilt. It was good to know we got it right.

Depending on where he lives, he can't say anything about his thoughts or the deliberations in the jury room. He may be able to tell you the verdict.

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