Pray you never get selected to serve on a grand jury. They can require you to serve for a full week every month, for up to 4 years (in PA at least). It’s absolutely insane. You do get paid a little more though, I think it’s $40 a day.
You can always request an exemption for financial hardship. But that means that it’s never really a jury of your actual peers.
When I was called in for selection of the grand jury, so many people requested exemptions after hearing the insane requirements, the judge announced that no further exemptions would be granted.
The shocking thing is that before video and DNA evidence, pretty much all murders were never actually solved.
Witness testimony has been the cornerstone of most criminal cases in history, but witness testimony has been scientifically proven, repeatedly, to be entirely unreliable in all circumstances. Unless a killer confessed out of nowhere or was caught in the act, statistically they were innocent regardless of whatever twelve untrained yahoos were convinced of. The state, all states, have killed more innocent people with permission from the citizenry than any arbitrary group of civilian criminals in history, included ng all terror groups combined.
Gonna need a couple sources there, buddy. Sounds poetic but, like most poetry, a little bit hyperbolic.
… wikipedia how trials were done in the 1800s? This is, and I can’t stress this enough, common sense.
Man, sorry, this just sounds like you doubling down on not knowing what you’re talking about (For example, in what world has trial law ever been common sense?)
By the haploid genes of christ themself, you cannot say that witness testimony is unreliable while claiming that modern DNA evidence has somehow improved things. It screams that you’ve bought in to the borderline propaganda of modern media, that forensic evidence is in any way reliable. The internet is rife with reporting about how unreliable it is, in fact.
Seriously, unless someone confessed or was caught in the act, they were innocent when convicted? Statiscially most people convicted were innocent? Where in the hell are you getting this? Please, enlighten me, since my digging in wikipedia has failed to find a source to support your position (though the number of articles on trial law in the 1800s is… small, to say the least)
Look, I’m not arguing about the violence of the state or that trial procedure has been (and is) awfully biased, but specifically trial procedure is nothing like (and has never been) as bad as you imply it is/was.
No they’re right eyewitness testimony has turned out to be shit. In your responses it looks like you go out of your way to miss the entire body of eyewitness experiments.
That wasn’t the point I was addressing, but I appreciate you providing sources!
The unreliability of eyewitness statements isn’t in question, I’ll happily agree that it’s total shit. But, while we’ve only recently quantified just how bad it is, the fact that it’s unreliable is not new information (this is actually at the heart of “beyond reasonable doubt”). For the same reason, nobody’s done the police procedural trope of a “Perp Walk” in years because of how demonstrably terrible it was. Criminal cases have required more than simply eyewitness accounts to establish a case for a very long time, and I wasn’t arguing that. I was pointing out that at no point in history was a (relatively) fair court system so broken that more than half of people convicted were innocent. That’s just ridiculous.
Hah, I went to college and work in public service.
I’ve never been called for jury duty.
Though I did work in a courthouse where juries assembled prior to trial. Criteria for jury selection in that local county court appeared to be: “Ancient and/or racist”.
I would love to do jury duty. It’s one of your obligations as a US Citizen, treat it like that.
Fifteen dollars is way beyond minimum wage from what I’ve read online. Also they apparently give them sandwiches and coffee and let’s them sit. It’s not like any US corporation would go that far. Unless they’d grab their organs later on.
Yeah. The right to trial by a jury of your peers is an amazing privilege that comes with the responsibility of willingness to serve on one. You don’t need to love your country to be proud to do it, just to love your fellow humans and to understand how much worse the alternatives are.
Fwiw, some states require employers to compensate employees at their regular wage while serving on a jury. Probably not relevant to you in particular, since I think only 10 do (plus DC), but it’s worth checking out if you’re unsure. Especially since some of the states that do have such provisions may not be the ones you might expect. Alabama and (parts of) Florida come to mind.
Furthermore, in states where such compensation is not compelled by law, employers are free to develop their own policies, which may include full compensation for jury duty or other mandatory court summons (e.g. being a witness). I’m sure that that is not common, per se, but it bears investigation if you find yourself in that situation. Either by contacting your HR department, or reading the policies yourself, depending on the competency or sliminess of your HR contacts.
Yeah im self employed, if I take off for jury duty I essentially lose my job. Court doest care, so fuck me I guess. I shred those when I get them and wait for the certified mail ones.