I have yet to be called.

Most people seem to come out of jury duty with a newfound interest in and respect for the judicial process.

I've always been fascinated by the idea of jury duty and am quite curious to see what the discussion in the deliberations is like. The group dynamics must be interesting and variable.

Most people seem to come out of jury duty with a newfound interest in and respect for the judicial process.

I guess I did it wrong then. About nine years ago, I sat on a jury for a child molestation case. During the jury selection process, we were all asked if we could believe the testimony of a young girl. (I don't recall exactly how old she was, but I think it was about five or six.) Everyone that was chosen said yes.

When it got down to deliberation, though, guess what happened? That's right. I believe the money quote was, "Kids that age will say anything". So one juror, stretching the meaning of "reasonable doubt" (not to mention stretching the patience of the rest of us), dug in her heels and we ended up with a hung jury.

I left that courtroom with a really bad taste in my mouth, and the feeling that we'd really let that little girl down.

I've done it twice, both times on petit juries. The way they did it where I was living at the time was put you on call for a six week period. First thing in the morning, you had to call a telephone recording to see whether to report to the courthouse that day.

Our six-week pool consisted of about fifty people. If a new trial or trials were beginning on that day, we would sit for selection by the attorneys. The first term I served, I was selected for four trials during the six weeks.

Three were criminal cases and one a civil matter. The longest of the criminal trials was two days with about three hours of deliberation, but the civil case took four days to try and we deliberated for five hours over two days.

In the cases I was involved in, deliberations were really pretty straight forward. Every initial polling I participated in was at least 10-2, most were unanimous. In the three criminal trials we found two not guilty and the third guilty (there was NO doubt).

The civil case was actually the most interesting because both the plaintiff and defendant were sleaze buckets, so it was a matter of following the facts. In that case we not only had to decide which party was the winner, but also the amount of the settlement. That's what took most of the time.

The second six week term I served, I was never selected for a trial. In fact, I only even had to report to the courthouse two days.

To summarize, I enjoyed it very much and would gladly serve again if called where I am living now.

I've been called three times, and I've been one of the first people dismissed from the pool each time.

After a while, it starts to bruise your ego.

They did the same 'pool' thing with me, netbros. I have to call each night to see if I need to report the next day. I'm excited about it. It gets me out of work for at least a day. :)

I got called up when I was a student living in Boston. I was taking a bunch of political science courses at the time, so I figured I'd stick a bunch of my library books in my bag and get some reading for my final paper done that day.

It didn't occur to me until I was going through the metal detector that having books with titles like "Terrorism", "Islam", "Islam and the West", and "Sacred Rage: The Wrath of Militant Islam" might not be the brightest idea.

Most people seem to come out of jury duty with a newfound interest in and respect for the judicial process.

I came out of it deeply cynical, with a newfound contempt for our judicial system. It's completely rigged from start to finish. Ugh.

Stories... hmm. No the only blackly amusing part was the attorney who was on our jury (!!) explaining that the guy MUST be guilty or the cop wouldn't have arrested him. Yay!

I got called for jury duty this year, and I was all excited. Then, on the day beforehand, you need to call a number, or check a web page, which I did. They told me "thank you for making yourself available", but that I wasn't required.

So I had to go to work, which was quite dull.


Also: Fuzzbean: Why not? Is reading books really that bad?

I did it about 10 years ago, and served on 3 juries, all 3 times as foreman, which I think was because of my education background (the other jurors didn't pick the foreman, like they seem to do in the movies; the two attorneys and the judge picked instead). The judge kept calling me, "Madam Foreperson," which sounded ridiculous, but otherwise I enjoyed myself.

My personal take was that everyone there seemed to be trying really really hard, impressively hard, to get it right in reaching a decision, but I have to add that my cases were all pretty minor -- one civil lawsuit and two no-one-was-hurt drunk driving charges. I didn't get on some of the more intense cases that were going on those weeks (there was one awful domestic abuse one that I remember in particular), so maybe my feeling would be closer to bmarkey's or small_ruminiant's if I been assigned differently.

Pompomtom: Boston is not known for having the most rational reactions to things that, viewed with a modicum of common sense, are not threats.

In DC, we can count on being called every two years. We go and sit in a courtroom for 4 hours or so while they determine who should actually be on the jury. I've never been chosen. Once it was because the case involved a handgun, and I had just the month before joined Handgun Control International. Another time, my wife and I were called the same day, so we knew we both wouldn't be picked. Neither was. The most recent time, about a month ago, it became clear that the crime in question had happened in my own neighborhood. Later that week, I saw one of the attorneys at the Metafilter meetup! Well, he wasn't a Metafilterian, just a guy at the bar, but that was odd.

It's fascinating to serve but it really surprises you what others will or will not believe.

I was the jury foreman in a rape case. It was bartered down to sexual assault because one of our number point blank refused to believe that a man could penetrate an almost comatose woman from behind, without her active participaton. Meh.

Bitter, bitter ignorance.