Jury Duty

If I'm in court, I'm on the opposite side of the jury

Just a quick one.. Sau you were a jurour and like OP said, if you know one of the witnesses you must ask to be excused by the judge.. But.. Do you get a list of witnesses before the start of the trial or could you be 4 days into a trail and then a witness you recognise could take the stand and only then would you realise you'd have to ask to be excused?

.anon. wrote: »

I've never been called up. I'd find a way out of it if I was.

I can't remember who said it originally, but when you go on trial, you're essentially putting your fate into the hands of twelve people who weren't smart enough to get out of jury duty.

That is the problem though, it is seen as perfectly acceptable to dodge jury duty however you can so all that is left is a pool with an unnaturally high % of dimwits and wasters.

Of course wuth the clown courts we have here chances are all that will happen is your time will be wasted for nothing anyway; go to the trouble of putting your life on hold listening to blowhard barristers for a week or two, dilligently examine all the evidence, make a decision then shuffle off while the judge gives a scumbag with 3 figure previous another suspended sentence.

I knew of the accused and thought he/she was guilty /innocent

I got excused because of health issues.

The Irish legal system - having your fate decided by 12 men & women who weren't clever enough to get out of jury duty...

Got a letter about jury duty, got a letter from my employer about how essential I was at that particular time, got out of jury duty.

Cracking story I know.

buried wrote: »

They should do it all online if you got the accessibility, which seems to be everywhere. Just video zoom the trial straight to your living room sitting in your pajamas eating toasted sandwiches of your own filling choice.

Well to be fair to you most proceedings are open to the public,

The jury on the other hand are corralled.

Due to go in a few weeks. Very much looking forward to it, be a nice break from work, even if I don't get selected

I did one in Southwark Crown Court London a long while back. I loved every second of it. They paid me fairly well and as I was working in the evenings I could have still worked but decided against it.

I was initially worried because the first case I was called on was predicted to last months. Fraud by employees in a government department. Turned out it ended as soon as it started due to some objection. So ended up on a relatively short 2 week road rage one.

The judge seemed to have a very short temper. I recall him throwing out an observer because he was eating sweets. He just wouldn't have it as he put it. Also, when a juror put up their hand at the very beginning of the trial he went "What? Questions already and we haven't even started!". Turned out the juror knew one of the witnesses, and that's not allowed. So a new juror had to be chosen.

I was a bit apprehensive during the deliberations at first because I didn't really follow the instructions about how we're supposed to conduit ourselves but as it turned out there were a couple of other jurors who had done it before so they knew what was what.

Deliberations took 3 days, not many hours per day I don't think. We came to an impasse where we had to convince one single juror to vote with the rest of us, otherwise I think it would have gone to a re-trial. We convinced that juror eventually and that was it. Not guilty verdict. On summing up the Judge seemed to indicate he agreed with the decision when he said "It was a difficult one".

Yyhhuuu wrote: »

. I really think the Jury should be paid.

If it helps, apparently house insurance has a clause that allows you to claim for jury duty in several providers, at least from what I've seen so far?

buried wrote: »

They use probate as an excuse to withhold money in an estate situation. A good lot of them in my experience actually try to create and manufacture conflict within a inheritance/will situation. Creates more business opportunities for them. A law came out about 4 years ago? Made it law for undertakers/Hoteliers to be paid for functions immediately, everyone else has to wait, some payments I've been waiting over 10 years. Its typical in this country. The law racket has the game sown up. For some jobs I have done I may never get paid.

You should watch out for the Statute of Limitations. If the debt exceeds 6 years then you may not be able to sue. If a part-payment is made it may effect the clock on the time limit , but I'm not a Solicitor.

I can understand why a Solicitor may not be able to pay immediately or for some time and why there would be a delay. The payment of debts would be a priority in the Estate distribution but the Solicitor will not be able to access the funds from banks, financial institutions or close a sale of a property until Probate or Administration issues. There may be undue delays in complex Estates in finalizing this. The only person laughing all the way to the bank is the Solicitor.

It is in the interest of the Solicitor that complex matters arise. Some of them also involve themselves in sending out unnecessary correspondence in order to bulk up the file to charge accordingly. I was a beneficiary in an Estate and dealt with them numerous times . I had to tell one to stop regularly sending me out letters with nothing in them. Another Solicitor used to send me out 3 separate letters in separate envelopes on the same day. It was obvious what was going on. They are in my experience a law unto themselves. The pomposity and arrogance of some of them is quite unbelievable.

I've never done jury duty but, pre-Covid, I used to often sit in on big cases in the Criminal Courts. Super interesting, but with none of the responsibilities of actually being on the jury.

I got my letter summoning me to JD literally the first day I was eligible to serve after college.

Ended up on a rape case. It was a frustrating one. We heard about a day and a half of testimony from the prosecution and cross examination and then for about a week and a half we were in and out of the Jury room because of confusions (or deliberate disruption) from both sides on what could and couldn't be said in court.

The Judge said there was no way he could expect a Jury to make heads or tails of whats going on and dismissed us and excused us for 5 years.

At the time I was on a zero hours contract and my boss was sound and scheduled me in for 40 hour weeks those 2 weeks. Don't know if what he did was legal even but made a difference to me ha.

Then again the very first month I was eligible to serve again after the 5 years I was summoned again however this time I was working in a small business on a client based role and my boss wrote a letter asking me to be dismissed which I was.

I'd love to know how they draw names or was it just a coincidence my name came up twice as soon as I could have served.