I hated this. It was an interesting experience but the restriction of my freedom and the repercussions sucked ass. But oh well.
So jury duty is like this. You enter the courthouse every day and they search your bags for ‘sharp objects’. In reality the guards are way too lazy to actually look in your bag, so they ask you whether you have any or not and trust you based on your answer. Hooray for courthouse security!
On the first day you will have to sit in a room of about a hundred people. They play you a video from the 90s about the importance of jury duty and then you wait a while until court sessions start (10AM sharp every day).
The next part is pretty fun.
After you walk in, they start selecting jury members (empanelling). The goal is to walk to the front of the room and hold the Bible and swear (“So help me God”, not… you know) but on the way the prosecutor or defense could say “stand by” or “challenge” which means you’ll have to stop walking and turn around. Usually this happens just before you reach for the Bible.
I walked up fully expecting them to say something… but then the next thing I know I’m being sworn in, so I guess they liked me.
After empanelling they start on the case straight away. For details on the case, see:
http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/news/national/pensioner-braindamaged-in-mistaken-bashing/2009/01/13/1231608697614.html
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24912432-26103,00.html
Every day we would have to assemble at 9:30AM in the courthouse and listen to stuff until 4:30 in the afternoon, and then I’d have to catch public transport with dirty people. Oh yeah, I got paid lunch too.
We had little notebooks to write things in too, but they wouldn’t let us keep anything. I had little quotes and pictures that I was planning to put in this post but oh well. I only remember one quote.
Lawyer dude: He had problems?
Dude: Yes… I can’t remember what it was… but it was some kind of memory problem.
ANYWAY…
After a week and a day they finished up on the case:
http://www.thedaily.com.au/news/2009/jan/20/aap-jury-retires-in-machete-attack-case/
And we had to deliberate for a whole 2 days. This is what it was like:
Two people were adamant he was guilty. One was like, “LOOK at him! He’s SO GUILTY” the whole time and the other had reasons I suppose. The judgmental attitude in the first person was disgusting. One guy said there was reasonable doubt. The rest of the people were open minded and ready to listen.
After two days of deliberation it was like:
Ten people had decided he was guilty. The same guy said there was reasonable doubt. I said there was reasonable doubt.
The whole day we were sending notes to the judge saying that we weren’t going to reach a decision but he kept sending us back into the jury room and telling us to continue but nothing changed. So it was pretty much a waste of a day. I told the jury guys that I changed my mind as a joke and they took me seriously. Idiots.
So at the end of the day around 4:30PM the judge said, “Ok, you can have an 11 jury agreement”. That guy wasn’t going to change anyway. Everyone knew I was still on the other side. We got back into the jury room and all eyes were on me.
But hell, I’m not going to send a guy to jail if there’s reasonable doubt:
http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,24946972-3102,00.html
So that’s the end of the Jury Duty story. Actually, I may bitch about the repercussions later. The biggest one that’s annoying me at the moment is that work has cancelled all my shifts until March because they didn’t know when I’d finish jury duty. I may have to call upon the courts to rectify this situation.
- Matt