Invitation to corruption.

If I remember correctly, Al Capone tried the "paid" jury system as did John Gotti. It really did not work out to well for them.

With appropriate safeguards in place, I would think that could be minimized, and imo would be no worse than some of the "biases" and plain ole "dumb a$$ decisions" that our current system seems to produce.

I disagree Keith. A professional jury system would also double or triple the bureaucracy (Big Government) associated with juries.

The Founders got it right IMHO.

Personally, I do not think the "average Joe/Jane" off the street has "the smarts" to adequately assimilate, process, and reach a logical conclusion that is required in modern society. When almost half the population doesn't make it through hs, I don't want them in my "jury pool". The "founders's" juries consisted of rich white men...times change :). We'll just have to disagree...no problem, but I think our current system could definitely be improved upon.

By that logic, we should have professional voters decide our elections.

Sitting on a jury is a KEY component of a Free society. It is a privilege and a responsibility. Paid juries invite Big Government, Big Brother, government corruption, cronyism and organized crime to have a seat at the table.

Participatory Citizenship is a big piece of the foundation of our country.

I'm looking forward to June 10 and beyond BTW.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1207322317.jpg

HD, seriously, do NOT post here about the trial any more until the trial is over. Talking about the trial while you are a juror, even indirectly, can get you in trouble and can end the case in a mistrial (at great cost and aggravation to all) or it can end up in a reversal and retrial (at even greater cost and aggravation. And guess who the judge is going to take his aggravation out on if he has to retry the case? Please tell us all about it after the trial is over, but in the mean time don't post about it at all.

I am a lawyer so I have a personal and professional interest in jurors. I honor jurors and the service they perform. Along with voting, jury duty is the highest civic service we have to offer. Good luck, and I hope you aren't personally and financially inconvenienced too much. A case like yours is actually quite rare. I can't wait to hear about it.

Just shows that I'm not qualified :)

Take old issues of car magazines, leave them in the prospective jurors waiting room. If the courthouse there is anything like here, they have no guy oriented reading material.

Ha HA, now I know where you live Shaun, I am going to order 10 cords of wood delivered to your house! Nah, just messin' with ya, but you should perhaps take that info out of that post.

I can't afford to take 3 weeks semi-paid vacation, and neither can my employees. If I go to jury duty it is not a hardship on just me. No way I would ever be seated on a jury anyway. I would be asking the wrong questions and neither side would want my redneck ass in the jury box. Our system does leave you with the dregs sitting on the jury, with no offense meant to present company

Maybe I am qualified after all :)

I've served on two juries. While I don't find it the most enjoyable thing to do, I do think a trial by a jury of your peers is an important right that most other countries could only dream about.

The first one was a child molestation case that was tough to sit through. It was a father who raped his 7 yo daughter. There were one or two jurors that got hung up on the reasonable doubt issue so we agreed we'd give him 10 years probation so we could get agreement on guilt. I guess the guy thought we might give him 99 years in prison which was the max penalty so he took the ADA's offer of 14 years in prison. Doh!!!

The second one was a robbery case a couple weeks ago. I was picked for the foreman on this one and it was obvious to me he was guilty. We still spent a couple hours deliberating where I had to make the case that the ADA didn't :(. So we found him guilty and then the judge came in and told us the rest of the story, which confirmed the guy was guilty as hell.

Tobra, you would be surprised at the quality of jurors that get seated. At least where I am, we really get good people who have inquiring minds and make the lawyers do their job. In Minneapolis the jury pool will be about 1/3 blue collar to working poor, about 1/3 students or educated professionals, and about 1/3 retired grandmothers from Edina. The final group seated on the jury usually reflects those proportions. I had a guy on the Forbes 400 list (a member of the Cargill family) on one of my jury pools. He got struck. I've had partners at large law firms, and once I had a plaintiffs' PI attorney on a personal injury case I thought was so obvious that I let him stay on the jury. He made the right call but told me later he couldn't believe I left him on the jury. It doesn't matter how educated or wealthy the jury is. If they have common sense they are a good jury and are an invaluable check on the system. I can't say enough good things about our jury system, other than the obvious personal sacrifice that some people have to make to be on the jury. It would be a terrible sacrifice for me to serve on a three week jury if I got called. My former employer paid full sallary during jury service, but my current employer only pays me what I bill. Of course, he's an SOB, but I'm used to that. :)

While I agree with you to a point, the problem here is that this is EXACTLY what our system demands - a "jury by one's peers", usually interpreted as being a cross-section of society-at-large.

At the risk of sounding a bit elitist here, I suspect most people that own Porsches and post on this forum are a bit more to the right-hand side of the bell curve and are therefore a bit put off by where "average" people are. I'm not just talking about dollar value or net worth here, I'm talking about education, socioeconomic status, work ethic, the works. . .

This usually benefits the defense. High-minded intellectual arguments don't often play well with "average Jane/Joe" juries that aren't particularly sophisticated or educated. It comes off as elitist. A lot of people from working-class America will relate to the plight of the poor victim defendant and his poor public defender attorney rather than a bunch of legal babble and "verbal diarrhea" from some uppity, politically-connected prosecutor and the popo, who a LOT of people only have contact with when it's not exactly to their benefit (so they might see it as an opportunity to "get back at" the system). Again, advantage defense. At least in criminal trials. At least this is what I've observed.

I don't mind being called. It's a chance to do something different for a day (or a few) which is always welcome in my otherwise boring world. It's a chance to apply my eduction and mind to a serious problem. And maybe, just maybe I can make a positive impression on some of my peers on the panel who might not be so fortunate as myself to have the kind of education and background I do. It's perhaps a good exercise in character building to understand how they think a bit too. It's far too easy to live in my isolated, white-collar world and look down my nose at those who slog it out for a living fixing transmissions or bagging groceries or trying to raise their four kids from three different fathers or whatever they do. Ultimately that benefits nobody. We all have to live on this world and I see jury service as an opportunity to better understand my fellow man - and in so doing, help me to make better use of the talents and opportunities I have to help make the world better for them and for all of us.

I guess that sounds a bit preachy and high-brow, which I don't mean it to but I think you'll get my point. I don't mind being called. I can afford to do it for a short time and although it's a bit inconvenient, I think it was probably a bit more inconvenient for our forefathers who fought and died so we can sit here on an Internet forum and gripe about upholding the freedoms they fought for. You won't catch me doing that.

MRM, as a lawyer, how do you feel about the whole jury selection process? Every time I've been called in, and made it through a couple of rounds into the voir dire process, I always felt like the deck was being stacked. It seemed that perfectly qualified candidates, with good communication skills, and no preconceived notions or biases were being tossed out immediately. Has the jury selection process skewed justice or is it just too risky to hope for 12 random jurors that get it right?

The process isn't pretty when you're going through it, but it is better than it looks from the jurror's eyes because you can't see the whole picture. In general, once you get 6 or 12 people seated, there is enough diversity on the jury that it really isn't skewed too much one way or the other. It's tough to pull one over on that many people at the same time. It happens, but not as oten as the news makes it sound. You hear about the unusual verdicts, but you don't hear about the thousand normal verdicts that are returned every day for each one that makes the news.

I disagree. In one of the times I was a juror, we did two cases: a home grow (drug) case; and an assault case between a married couple. The fact we had professionals, a former judge, and "ordinary jane's and joe's" resulted in some very interesting discussions and insights into why the people did what they did. Without them, I doubt we would have been as fair.

Have you actually sat on a case and deliberated?

+1

I feel your pain. In '05 I spent 4 weeks on a jury for a molestation/rape/church cover-up trial. I didn't have a job at the time, so I figured I might as well see what juries are all about.
I seem to recall the judge saying that King County hasn't increased the juror compensation since the '50s. I got "lucky" and received something like $25/day for mileage since I had to commute from Bothell to Kent.