Jury Duty

[PanzerMeyer]

So finally at age 51 I was picked to serve on a jury for a trial. I have to say it was quite an interesting experience being a juror for a 3 day criminal trial. First of all, it was interesting seeing how the body language and facial expressions of both the defense lawyers and the prosecutors would give away how they were feeling even though they were doing their best to be as neutral as possible. I also felt a bit old since all four lawyers looked like they were between their late 20's and early 30's!


Has anyone here served on a jury in recent years? Overall it was a positive experience for me even though there were some inconveniences for my usual weekly schedule.

[Cr33p3r]

I have been called for jury duty a bunch of times but only once got on a case (lawyers usually dont like engineers). It was a rear-end collision where the people that got rear ended wanted all this money for pain and suffering. The funny thing was that only the passengers were looking for compensation, not the driver who got rear ended. It was like 3-4 days and then done. The evidence showed the damage was so insignificant that there's no way anyone could have been injured. Found out later the driver had pursued money and when he didnt get it, the rest of his family tried for money and that was the case I was on. The lady that rear ended the other car was a county employee so the prosecution attorney was trying to guilt us all into feeling like we were playing favorites if we voted in favor with her.

My mom in NJ was on a grand jury for a state murder case. She said it was really difficult to be exposed to all the details. Without posting them all here in the family friendly forum, here is the link to the case she was on: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melanie_McGuire. It made national news.

[PanzerMeyer]

Oh damn creeper, now that was some high profile case your mom was on! It makes the case I was on seem like small potatoes by comparison.

[PanzerMeyer]

I read the whole WIKI article you posted Creeper and the motive of the murderer simply seems to have been "want to get out of a shitty marriage".

Crazy.

[Cr33p3r]

Yeah pretty much it. Its funny because she couldn't talk about it at the time other than to say it was all over the news so it became obvious what trial she was a part of.

My daughter got called for jury selection for a criminal case here in NC a few years ago and one of the litigators was John Edwards, former presidential candidate who ended up cheating on his wife who had cancer at the time. My daughter was asked some question by Mr. Edwards during the jury selection about doctors making mistakes or something. Her response was "everyone makes mistakes sometimes." Well she had no idea what when John Edwards had been confronted with his infidelity publicly his response was "everyone makes mistakes". She said he turned bright red when she said that to him. She ended up googling it all later and found out why haha. The case ended up being settled and she didn't have to serve.

Anyway, funny story I thought I'd share.

[Cr33p3r]

BTW great suspense film with Harrison Ford and Raul Julia called Presumed Innocent. I think they made it into a netflix series or something more recently.

Side note: My parents took me to a lot of plays and musicals in NYC when I was growing up and I was fortunate to have seen Raul Julie play Dracula in a play. He was outstanding!

[PanzerMeyer]

Yeah, Raul Julia was an excellent actor who left us way too young.