I had jury duty the other week . First time in my life .

I am about 25 minutes from the city ... where I had to appear for this jury duty .

Monday til FRI .

First day - I get hauled into a MURDER TRIAL . I never thought they would pick me .... out of the 40 or so people .

Trial is TUES WED AND THURS . Young boy (17) shoots a guy , but misses - and kills another young man of about 19 ...

so he is on trial for both murders .... (even though the one was attempted murder).

All white jury . about 40 people in court everyday - primarily black .

As a white man , i was kinda shocked that they didnt have more black people on the jury .

Oh and you get paid crap . Oh and it was alittle scary being taken back to my car by armed guards.

We did find him guilty . But i was amazed how everyone who took the stand - would not answer questions . The best example of this - Prosecuter: "is this a friend or an acquantance" .

Answer (from more than one ) : "he my homey" .

"That wasnt the question , was he a friend or an acquantance" ...

"i told ya he my homey" .

I did jury duty about 5 years ago. I loved it. It was a terrific experience and would love to do it again. My case was a young woman who was charged with guns and drug offences. Long story short, she was covering for her piece of shit boyfriend. He was a real piece of work. We found her guilty. She got 5 years, so I'm assuming she's out now. I felt very bad about it because she was a young mother and had 2 college degrees, but she did the crime, so.................

Her boyfriend went down for a long time too and hopefully once he's out, Canada will deport his ass back to Jamaica.

Jury duty is not as easy as people think.

no , there were 2 girls on our jury that were crying as they were reading the verdicts ...

I couldnt watch .. and i got alil red eyed too ...

I felt bad for the defendent but I also got alittle obsessed after wards about the victim ... who apparently was just walking on the street .

You said it best - it isnt easy ...

From my limited experience with jury duty, I can ASSURE YOU that we are NOT judged by our peers.
We are judged by a jury of whomever can afford to take time off from work.

That means civil servants, students, and stay-at-home spouses.

There is no "pay" for jury duty...it's like gas & lunch money that they give you.
When I was called, I had no vacation time left. I called in sick for the 2 or 3 days that I went through the whole process, and then I made SURE that I was excused from serving.
If I HAD been selected, that week without pay would've KILLED me. I lived check-to-check back then.

It was some sort of compensation trial (some eye doctor apparently was being sued).

Ain't nobody got time for that.

no question about it, our current legal system needs a major overhaul. from attorney oversight to jury selection, the entire process is skewed and affected by money.

PurpleJedi said:

From my limited experience with jury duty, I can ASSURE YOU that we are NOT judged by our peers.
We are judged by a jury of whomever can afford to take time off from work.

That means civil servants, students, and stay-at-home spouses.

There is no "pay" for jury duty...it's like gas & lunch money that they give you.
When I was called, I had no vacation time left. I called in sick for the 2 or 3 days that I went through the whole process, and then I made SURE that I was excused from serving.
If I HAD been selected, that week without pay would've KILLED me. I lived check-to-check back then.

It was some sort of compensation trial (some eye doctor apparently was being sued).

Ain't nobody got time for that.

Um - maybe I''ve missed something, but I'm none of those 3 you mentioned above and I did my duty. I got paid from my company. I would think that if it's considered our civil duty, our employers should at least pay us. Maybe I'm out in left field though? Maybe things are different here in Canada??

I would do jury duty again in a heartbeat. It was tough, but very educational and interesting.

Empress said:

PurpleJedi said:

From my limited experience with jury duty, I can ASSURE YOU that we are NOT judged by our peers.
We are judged by a jury of whomever can afford to take time off from work.

That means civil servants, students, and stay-at-home spouses.

There is no "pay" for jury duty...it's like gas & lunch money that they give you.
When I was called, I had no vacation time left. I called in sick for the 2 or 3 days that I went through the whole process, and then I made SURE that I was excused from serving.
If I HAD been selected, that week without pay would've KILLED me. I lived check-to-check back then.

It was some sort of compensation trial (some eye doctor apparently was being sued).

Ain't nobody got time for that.

Um - maybe I''ve missed something, but I'm none of those 3 you mentioned above and I did my duty. I got paid from my company. I would think that if it's considered our civil duty, our employers should at least pay us. Maybe I'm out in left field though? Maybe things are different here in Canada??

I would do jury duty again in a heartbeat. It was tough, but very educational and interesting.

Yeah, most companies here don't pay for jury duty.
That's why I mentioned "civil servants" (Postal workers, Teachers, etc.) - they do get paid to serve on jury duty.

PurpleJedi said:

Empress said:

Um - maybe I''ve missed something, but I'm none of those 3 you mentioned above and I did my duty. I got paid from my company. I would think that if it's considered our civil duty, our employers should at least pay us. Maybe I'm out in left field though? Maybe things are different here in Canada??

I would do jury duty again in a heartbeat. It was tough, but very educational and interesting.

Yeah, most companies here don't pay for jury duty.
That's why I mentioned "civil servants" (Postal workers, Teachers, etc.) - they do get paid to serve on jury duty.

I'm not a civil servant and I got paid by my company for jury duty. I had to turn in the stubs from my lunch stipend (which is all you get "paid" here, not sure if it's different in other states) and they deducted that amount from my normal pay and I got the rest. Some companies value civic duties and want you to participate.

CarrieMpls said:

PurpleJedi said:

Yeah, most companies here don't pay for jury duty.
That's why I mentioned "civil servants" (Postal workers, Teachers, etc.) - they do get paid to serve on jury duty.

I'm not a civil servant and I got paid by my company for jury duty. I had to turn in the stubs from my lunch stipend (which is all you get "paid" here, not sure if it's different in other states) and they deducted that amount from my normal pay and I got the rest. Some companies value civic duties and want you to participate.

However, I don't know a SINGLE person here who would get paid (not counting teachers that I know). The past 3 companies that I've worked for did not.

Maybe it's a New York thing?

I did some looking and it appears it's not that common here either for a company to compensate for jury duty. It's really a shame.

So people who can afford to take off work to serve are not "peers"? What are they then?

i dodged the jury duty bullet on wednesday. i had already postponed twice, so i had no excuse. during the orientation, the clerk told us that we would be put on a civil case which would probably last 5 days at most. but when i went to the courtroom, the judge told us that we were probably going to be there 10 days AT LEAST. i tried to get out of it, but he wasn't particularly sympathetic esp. since he could see from my summons form that my company DOES PAY for jury duty. we don't have a set policy as to how many days will be compensated, but we don't get docked for it, either. i'm a paralegal and 10 days is just too long to be out of the office w/o sufficient backup. anyway, the case got postponed and i got to go home. this would have been my fourth time on a jury, and i have to say 1) i don't like it at all and 2) the justice system is like watching sausage being made. it's definitely not as they describe it in all the textbooks or during orientation when they're giving you whole spiel about 'civic duty', 'american exceptionalism', etc. blah....

JustErin said:

So people who can afford to take off work to serve are not "peers"? What are they then?

A limited section of society.

Peers would mean, to me, a selection of all sorts of people from all walks of life.

The room that I sat in for pre-selection had that...until everyone who had more pressing business found one way or another to get excused.

When I served on jury duty twice, I got paid my normal salary from my job and a daily stipend by the court which was about $35 a day. This was back in 1990 and 1991.

PurpleJedi said:

CarrieMpls said:

I'm not a civil servant and I got paid by my company for jury duty. I had to turn in the stubs from my lunch stipend (which is all you get "paid" here, not sure if it's different in other states) and they deducted that amount from my normal pay and I got the rest. Some companies value civic duties and want you to participate.

However, I don't know a SINGLE person here who would get paid (not counting teachers that I know). The past 3 companies that I've worked for did not.

Maybe it's a New York thing?

I've had to report for jury duty (in NYC) twice in ten years -- both times I was paid by my company.

Also, when I lived in Chicago, the museum where I worked still paid people when they were called for jury duty, however they were supposed to sign over their jury duty pay to the museum. (Since they were already getting paid by the museum.)

[Edited 5/3/14 21:06pm]

i got like a "quality day off " which was stupid .... not really paid ...

oh and my "jury" pay just came in the mail ... they pay like 9.00 a day and then miliage so the total came to like 108.00 .

whoopeeeeee .... i do hate my job by the way .