it comes in pints?

Hope everything goes well. Mine is next week.

You will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to their own. Resistence is futile.

Take a copy of "Combat Knives" and "Soldier of Fortune" with you and you'll be home by lunchtime.

Have fun, Ken. I'm looking forward to disappearing as soon as I list my occupation as "prosecutor." Theoretically, I could still get selected for a civil jury, but lawyers just in general don't want other lawyers as jurors, regardless of what area they practice in.

You forgot your NRA hat, didn't you, and your KILL 'EM ALL AND LET GOD SORT 'EM OUT t-shirt.

[red face] Yeah, I forgot them...

Oh and Dave, I never really understood that mentality for civil cases, prosecuter or criminal lawyer, I mean. I can understand why they wouldn't want criminal lawyers or prosecutors for criminal cases, and civil trial lawyers for civil cases. But it seems like they shouldn't care too awfully much for a case outside one's type of practice.

But then, I've never really gotten the idea of peremptory challenges either. If there's no valid cause for dismissal, why should they be allowed to dismiss? I know I'm missing something subtle, so sue me ;)

The reason is that trial lawyers on all sides want a jury that can be led, and a lawyer juror is, as a general rule, not going to be as easily led. A lawyer juror is probably going to either wind up the foreperson, or the lone holdout hanging the jury.

As for the logic of peremptory strikes, I suppose it's partly just tradition and partly meant to temper the possible extremes of a random pool, to make a more "level playing field" and actually live up to the rhetoric of picking a jury that can be fair and impartial.

Yeah, that kind of makes sense for peremptories. I've just never heard a good explanation.

Interestingly, given the kind of case it is, there were two I expected to go on peremptories immediately. But only one was challenged. And the voir dire was really quick.

The only irritating part was that we had the full jury empanelled by lunch break, but rather than just spending the extra five minutes to pick the one alternate and letting all the other poor folk go home, they all had to come back after lunch break for five minutes. I mean hey, I'm into schadenfreude as much as the next guy, but that seemed kind of silly.

I served on a civil case jury two years ago.It was
a three day trial with two days of deliberation.
Nobody wanted to be there and at first tried to get off the jury.But, all in all it was an inspiring experience and the jury took its role very
seriously.

I made it as far as jury interviews. The case was criminal (negligent homicide), and involved this character speeding to dry his car off. Seriously. He passed another guy, and somehow forced him off the road, killing him.

I wasn't seated because I am an engineer, and do understand vector math, friction, physics, and other minutia. The defense couldn't get me out of there fast enough.

I am an engineer, and do understand vector math, friction, physics, and other minutia

In other words, you are a f*cking freak.

Of course, I understand them also, so um, yeah, compadre...

One of my biologist (but not geneticist) friends was let go from a pending rape trial because he admitted to knowing how DNA fingerprinting worked....

I served once. Back when the jury term here was 3 months long. I am not kidding you - 3 months. It was kind of like being under house arrest; they didn't have an automated system (small town) so you had to be sure to be by a phone every weekday between 4 and 5 to find out if you were needed the next day. (And sometimes you had to keep trying, if the line was busy).

I wound up having to go in twice but was never impaneled. Never even got as far as voir dire. But for one entire summer I couldn't make plans more than a day in advance.

Oh, Ricki, that system sucks. Santa Cruz county used to do that for one month, but you only had to call once a week. If you weren't needed for Monday you were off the hook for the week.

Calif has by and large gone to a one-day/one-trial system now. If you don't get picked, you're off the hook for a year. However, my limited observation is that I am getting summonses more frequently these days , and I always have to go in to the courthouse. That call to the recorder the night before seems almost ritualistic.

Yeah--the hours are much better, Ken, but too bad they're not real "days off" from work! Hope your desk isn't buried.

I'm waiting to see if I have to report next week. I don't think they'd want me. My dad's cousins were in law enforcement, I worked for a law firm for two years, I've been working in another capacity for lawyers for the last five years, and--oh, yeah--my cousin is married to one of the judges.

Ricki--three months? That seems unconstitutional or something.

You forgot Julie's Patented Get-Out-Of-Jury-Duty-Phrase-That-Pays: "I believe only God can judge."

If that doesn't work, try "I believe in the legalization of marijuana". (At least that works here in Tejas.)

Of course, I never have to use the above. All I say is, "I'm from California." I guarentee you, NO ONE in TEXAS wants a Californicator on their jury. :-)

My father always threatened to say, when asked the standard question about prejudice, "Hell yes! I'm prejudiced against criminals! They should ALL be in prison."

He's never even been called, though.

Yeah, the three month system was really bad. I got called in, like, February one year. I called the local judge and explained I was teaching a class that only I could teach (and it had already started, so I'd have to cancel it if I went on jury duty). He agreed to defer me to the summer but that wasn't much better - I had someone who could step in for me when needed but I was sweating towards the end of my term as I had non-refundable tickets to travel and I was afraid I'd get picked.

I think they've changed it to a one-month system now, but there's still the threat of Grand Jury or Federal duty (for which you have to drive 2+ hours to the state capitol. I can't imagine doing that and I pray I never get called).

We used to have six-month terms, but now it's changed to four. We don't defer service, as each panel is drawn randomly from the list of registered voters.

We have a call-in system where the juror calls a dedicated line to see when to report, and then they call the night before that day to see if the trial is still on.

It's worked well so far.

Oh, and it's "vwah deer."

Tell them you enjoyed Capitol Steps and you'll probably be booted. =)

HA fly, that's true!

I've never been called to jury duty, but every place that I've worked at(well, the 3 "real" jobs) had a policy of swapping checks with an employee who was called. They got paid as they normally would and signed the jury duty check over to the company. I thought that was the norm, but maybe not?

Dave, that's pretty common but a lot of companies just don't bother taking the jury duty pay (only $15/day here). Some companies won't pay the salary, which just plain sucks.

That's policy for Federal employees, Dave. But not all private employees do it, as Ken notes.

Lisa, voir dire is "vwah deer" everywhere but Texas. There it's "vorr dyer". ;-)

Sometimes it's "vorr dyer" here too, Dave!