Jury Duty Quotes

Raise your hand if you had no idea you’d see so much nudity in one week of jury duty.” Twelve hands flew straight into the air. And unbelievably, Payton laughed.

In 2002, having spent more than three years in one residence for the first time in my life, I got called for jury duty. I show up on time, ready to serve. When we get to the voir dire, the lawyer says to me, “I see you’re an astrophysicist. What’s that?” I answer, “Astrophysics is the laws of physics, applied to the universe—the Big Bang, black holes, that sort of thing.” Then he asks, “What do you teach at Princeton?” and I say, “I teach a class on the evaluation of evidence and the relative unreliability of eyewitness testimony.” Five minutes later, I’m on the street. A few years later, jury duty again. The judge states that the defendant is charged with possession of 1,700 milligrams of cocaine. It was found on his body, he was arrested, and he is now on trial. This time, after the Q&A is over, the judge asks us whether there are any questions we’d like to ask the court, and I say, “Yes, Your Honor. Why did you say he was in possession of 1,700 milligrams of cocaine? That equals 1.7 grams. The ‘thousand’ cancels with the ‘milli-’ and you get 1.7 grams, which is less than the weight of a dime.” Again I’m out on the street.

Along with voting, jury duty, and paying taxes, goofing off is one of the central obligations of American citizenship.

Getting out of jury duty is easy. The trick is to say you're prejudiced against all races.

Do you really want to be judged by twelve people who weren't smart enough to get out of jury duty?

She sincerely liked Mattie because unlike the others, Mattie never found the time to do jury duty on other people’s lives.

To begin with, this case should never have come to trial. The state has not produced one iota of medical evidence that the crime Tom Robinson is charged with ever took place... It has relied instead upon the testimony of two witnesses, whose evidence has not only been called into serious question on cross-examination, but has been flatly contradicted by the defendant. Now, there is circumstantial evidence to indicate that Mayella Ewel was beaten - savagely, by someone who led exclusively with his left. And Tom Robinson now sits before you having taken the oath with the only good hand he possesses... his RIGHT. I have nothing but pity in my heart for the chief witness for the State. She is the victim of cruel poverty and ignorance. But my pity does not extend so far as to her putting a man's life at stake, which she has done in an effort to get rid of her own guilt. Now I say "guilt," gentlemen, because it was guilt that motivated her. She's committed no crime - she has merely broken a rigid and time-honored code of our society, a code so severe that whoever breaks it is hounded from our midst as unfit to live with. She must destroy the evidence of her offense. But what was the evidence of her offense? Tom Robinson, a human being. She must put Tom Robinson away from her. Tom Robinson was to her a daily reminder of what she did. Now, what did she do? She tempted a *****. She was white, and she tempted a *****. She did something that, in our society, is unspeakable. She kissed a black man. Not an old uncle, but a strong, young ***** man. No code mattered to her before she broke it, but it came crashing down on her afterwards. The witnesses for the State, with the exception of the sheriff of Maycomb County have presented themselves to you gentlemen, to this court in the cynical confidence that their testimony would not be doubted, confident that you gentlemen would go along with them on the assumption... the evil assumption that all Negroes lie, all Negroes are basically immoral beings, all ***** men are not to be trusted around our women. An assumption that one associates with minds of their caliber, and which is, in itself, gentlemen, a lie, which I do not need to point out to you. And so, a quiet, humble, respectable *****, who has had the unmitigated TEMERITY to feel sorry for a white woman, has had to put his word against TWO white people's! The defendant is not guilty - but somebody in this courtroom is. Now, gentlemen, in this country, our courts are the great levelers. In our courts, all men are created equal. I'm no idealist to believe firmly in the integrity of our courts and of our jury system - that's no ideal to me. That is a living, working reality! Now I am confident that you gentlemen will review, without passion, the evidence that you have heard, come to a decision and restore this man to his family. In the name of GOD, do your duty. In the name of God, believe... Tom Robinson

...I do not think that it is right for a man to appeal to the jury or to get himself acquitted by doing so; he ought to inform them of the facts and convince them by argument. The jury does not sit to dispense justice as a favour, but to decide where justice lies; and the oath which they have sworn is not to show favour at their own discretion, but to return a just and lawful verdict... Therefore you must not expect me, gentlemen, to behave towards you in a way which I consider neither reputable nor moral nor consistent with my religious duty.

One more thing, gentlemen, before I quit. Thomas Jefferson once said that all men are created equal, a phrase that the Yankees and the distaff side of the Executive branch in Washington are fond of hurling at us. There is a tendency in this year of grace, 1935, for certain people to use this phrase out of context, to satisfy all conditions. The most ridiculous example I can think of is that the people who run public education promote the stupid and idle along with the industrious — because all men are created equal, educators will gravely tell you, the children left behind suffer terrible feelings of inferiority. We know all men are not created equal in the sense some people would have us believe — some people are smarter than others, some people have more opportunity because they’re born with it, some men make more money than others, some ladies make better cakes than others — some people are born gifted beyond the normal scope of most men. But there is one way in this country in which all men are created equal — there is one human institution that makes a pauper the equal of a Rockefeller, the stupid man the equal of an Einstein, and the ignorant man the equal of any college president. That institution, gentlemen, is a court. It can be the Supreme Court of the United States or the humblest J.P. court in the land, or this honorable court which you serve. Our courts have their faults, as does any human institution, but in this country our courts are the great levelers, and in our courts all men are created equal. I'm no idealist to believe firmly in the integrity of our courts and in the jury system — that is no ideal to me, it is a living, working reality. Gentlemen, a court is no better than each man of you sitting before me on this jury. A court is only as sound as its jury, and a jury is only as sound as the men who make it up. I am confident that you gentlemen will review without passion the evidence you have heard, come to a decision, and restore this defendant to his family. In the name of God, do your duty. In the name of God, believe him.

I happened to notice that among the men who had willingly presented themselves for jury-service was one whom I knew to be the father of seven children. Under a law of Augustus's he was exempt for the rest of his life; yet he had not pleaded for exemption or mentioned the size of his family. I told the magistrate: "Strike this man's name off. He's a father of seven." He protested: "But, Cæsar, he has made no attempt to excuse himself." "Exactly," I said, "he wants to be a juryman. Strike him off." I meant, of course,that the fellow was concealing his immunity from what every honest man considered a very thankless and disagreeable duty and that he therefore was almost certain to have crooked intentions. Crooked jurymen could pick up a lot of money by bribes, for it was a commonplace that one interested juryman could sway the opinions of a whole bunch of uninterested ones; and the majority verdict decided a case.

During voir dire, the interviews for jury selection, each person is asked under oath about their experience with the criminal justice system, as defendant or victim, but usually not even the most elementary effort is made to corroborate those claims. One ADA [Associate District Attorney] told me about inheriting a murder case, after the first jury deadlocked. He checked the raps for the jurors and found that four had criminal records. None of those jurors were prosecuted. Nor was it policy to prosecute defense witnesses who were demonstrably lying--by providing false alibis, for example--because, as another ADA told me, if they win the case, they don't bother, and if they lose, "it looks like sour grapes." A cop told me about a brawl at court one day, when he saw court officers tackle a man who tried to escape from the Grand Jury. An undercover was testifying about a buy when the juror recognized him as someone he had sold to. Another cop told me about locking up a woman for buying crack, who begged for a Desk Appearance Ticket, because she had to get back to court, for jury duty--she was the forewoman on a Narcotics case, of course. The worst part about these stories is that when I told them to various ADAs, none were at all surprised; most of those I'd worked with I respected, but the institutionalized expectations were abysmal. They were too used to losing and it showed in how they played the game.

For instance, while writing this, I was summoned to attend jury duty. Throughout the jury selection process, coordinators and judges reminded us how important our presence was, and how deeply they and the State of Oregon appreciated our service. The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Oregon and several judges who may or may not have been actors thanked us via video. The big joke of it was that attending jury service is mandatory and my summons threatened me with the possibility of being held in contempt of court for non-compliance. That pretty much sums up how the state “appreciates” its citizens. “We

We're brainwashed with garbage idioms like "Big girls don't cry". Guys who "cry like a girl" are told to "man up". Or "she's crying like a baby", as if only babies cry, which makes no sense to me, given babies have the fewest problems out of all of us. They don't have mortgages or jury duty, and they get the fun end of the whole birthing situation. The mother is the one who is pushing and bleeding and tearing, and the baby basically just gets to jet down a water slide. I think the whole "crying like a baby" idiom should be reversed: what we should say about babies is "Jesus, that baby is crying like a grown-up!

Along with voting, jury duty, and paying taxes, goofing off is one of the central obligations of American citizenship. So when my friends Joel and Stephen and I play hooky from our jobs in the middle of the afternoon to play Pop-A-Shot in a room full of children, I like to think we are not procrastinators; we are patriots pursuing happiness.

Our Revolution commenced on more favorable ground. It presented us an album on which we were free to write what we pleased. We had no occasion to search into musty records, to hunt up royal parchments, or to investigate the laws and institutions of a semi-barbarous ancestry. We appealed to those of nature, and found them engraved on our hearts. Yet we did not avail ourselves of all the advantages of our position. We had never been permitted to exercise self-government. When forced to assume it, we were novices in its science. Its principles and forms had entered little into our former education. We established however some, although not all its important principles. The constitutions of most of our States assert, that all power is inherent in the people; that they may exercise it by themselves, in all cases to which they think themselves competent, (as in electing their functionaries executive and legislative, and deciding by a jury of themselves, in all judiciary cases in which any fact is involved,) or they may act by representatives, freely and equally chosen; that it is their right and duty to be at all times armed; that they are entitled to freedom of person, freedom of religion, freedom of property, and freedom of the press.

If something bursts out of my chest, you’re the first one it’s going for. You know that, right?” Nick laughs, jogging down the corridor.

Have you ever heard that old joke about juries? Do you really want to be judged by twelve people who weren't smart enough to get out of jury duty? Yes-that's exactly who you want judging you. Because juries are people unfamiliar with the letter of the law. And those are people who can be swayed-by lots of elements that have absolutely nothing to do with facts.

Gentlemen, a court is no better than each man of you sitting before me on this jury. A court is only as sound as its jury, and a jury is only as sound as the men who make it up. I am confident that you gentlemen will review without passion the evidence you have heard, come to a decision, and restore this defendant to his family. In the name of God, do your duty.” Atticus’s

But there is one way in this country in which all men are created equal—there is one human institution that makes a pauper the equal of a Rockefeller, the stupid man the equal of an Einstein, and the ignorant man the equal of any college president. That institution, gentlemen, is a court. It can be the Supreme Court of the United States or the humblest J.P. court in the land, or this honorable court which you serve. Our courts have their faults, as does any human institution, but in this country our courts are the great levelers, and in our courts all men are created equal. I’m no idealist to believe firmly in the integrity of our courts and in the jury system—that is no ideal to me, it is a living, working reality. Gentlemen, a court is no better than each man of you sitting before me on this jury. A court is only as sound as its jury, and ajury is only as sound as the men who make it up. I am confident that you gentlemen will review without passion the evidence you have heard, come to a decision, and restore this defendant to his family. In the name of God, do your duty.

It is the duty of every citizen /resident of any country , nationals as well as expatriates to know the basics of the governing laws of the country one resides. Ignorance of the law or unawareness cannot be pleaded to escape liability.

I'm no idealist to believe firmly in the integrity of our courts and in the jury system—that is no ideal to me, it is a living, working reality. Gentlemen, a court is no better than each man of you sitting before me on this jury. A court is only as sound as its jury, and a jury is only as sound as the men who make it up. I am confident that you gentlemen will review without passion the evidence you have heard, come to a decision, and restore this defendant to his family. In the name of God, do your duty.

A mood of constructive criticism being upon me, I propose forthwith that the method of choosing legislators now prevailing in the United States be abandoned and that the method used in choosing juries be substituted. That is to say, I propose that the men who make our laws be chosen by chance and against their will, instead of by fraud and against the will of all the rest of us, as now... ...that the names of all the men eligible in each assembly district be put into a hat (or, if no hat can be found that is large enough, into a bathtub), and that a blind moron, preferably of tender years, be delegated to draw out one... The advantages that this system would offer are so vast and obvious that I hesitate to venture into the banality of rehearsing them. It would in the first place, save the commonwealth the present excessive cost of elections, and make political campaigns unnecessary. It would in the second place, get rid of all the heart-burnings that now flow out of every contest at the polls, and block the reprisals and charges of fraud that now issue from the heart-burnings. It would, in the third place, fill all the State Legislatures with men of a peculiar and unprecedented cast of mind – men actually convinced that public service is a public burden, and not merely a private snap. And it would, in the fourth and most important place, completely dispose of the present degrading knee-bending and trading in votes, for nine-tenths of the legislators, having got into office unwillingly, would be eager only to finish their duties and go home, and even those who acquired a taste for the life would be unable to increase the probability, even by one chance in a million, of their reelection. The disadvantages of the plan are very few, and most of them, I believe, yield readily to analysis. Do I hear argument that a miscellaneous gang of tin-roofers, delicatessen dealers and retired bookkeepers, chosen by hazard, would lack the vast knowledge of public affairs needed by makers of laws? Then I can only answer (a) that no such knowledge is actually necessary, and (b) that few, if any, of the existing legislators possess it... Would that be a disservice to the state? Certainly not. On the contrary, it would be a service of the first magnitude, for the worst curse of democracy, as we suffer under it today, is that it makes public office a monopoly of a palpably inferior and ignoble group of men. They have to abase themselves to get it, and they have to keep on abasing themselves in order to hold it. The fact reflects in their general character, which is obviously low. They are men congenitally capable of cringing and dishonorable acts, else they would not have got into public life at all. There are, of course, exceptions to that rule among them, but how many? What I contend is simply that the number of such exceptions is bound to be smaller in the class of professional job-seekers than it is in any other class, or in the population in general. What I contend, second, is that choosing legislators from that populations, by chance, would reduce immensely the proportion of such slimy men in the halls of legislation, and that the effects would be instantly visible in a great improvement in the justice and reasonableness of the laws.

Chauvin’s trial seem like a game of 15 on 1. Counting himself, [Attorney General] Ellison had 15 attorneys working on behalf of the government in prosecuting Derek Chauvin. Who knows how many assistants they had, but they took up two floors of the Hennepin County Courthouse. All of them were working against defense attorney Eric Nelson, who was handling practically all the duties during the trial by himself. Of course, the media and the Left realized the defense was outnumbered. They were doing their part to downplay the number of prosecutors in the case. Nelson didn’t feel outnumbered per se, but he did say, “There’s no way the jury didn’t notice the difference.

You stand now between anarchy and law. The Police have done their duty. Let the jury have the same courage so that the police can indeed rest in peace. The flowers of spring shall bloom upon their graves moistened by the tears of a great city. Outraged and violated law shall be redeemed and in their martyrdom anarchy shall be buried forever.

I’m no idealist to believe firmly in the integrity of our courts and in the jury system—that is no ideal to me, it is a living, working reality. Gentlemen, a court is no better than each man of you sitting before me on this jury. A court is only as sound as its jury, and a jury is only as sound as the men who make it up. I am confident that you gentlemen will review without passion the evidence you have heard, come to a decision, and restore this defendant to his family. In the name of God, do your duty.” Atticus’s

My point is that bias is not advertised by a glowing sign worn around jurors’ necks; we are all guilty of it, because the brain is wired for us to see what we believe, and it usually happens outside of everyone’s awareness. Affective realism decimates the ideal of the impartial juror. Want to increase the likelihood of a conviction in a murder trial? Show the jury some gruesome photographic evidence. Tip their body budgets out of balance and chances are they’ll attribute their unpleasant affect to the defendant: “I feel bad, therefore you must have done something bad. You are a bad person.” Or permit family members of the deceased to describe how the crime has hurt them, a practice known as a victim impact statement, and the jury will tend to recommend more severe punishments. Crank up the emotional impact of a victim impact statement by recording it professionally on video and adding music and narration like a dramatic film, and you’ve got the makings of a jury-swaying masterpiece.45 Affective realism intertwines with the law outside the courtroom as well. Imagine that you are enjoying a quiet evening at home when suddenly you hear loud banging outside. You look out the window and see an African American man attempting to force open the door of a nearby house. Being a dutiful citizen, you call 911, and the police arrive and arrest the perpetrator. Congratulations, you have just brought about the arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., as it happened on July 16, 2009. Gates was trying to force open the front door of his own home, which had become stuck while he was traveling. Affective realism strikes again. The real-life eyewitness in this incident had an affective feeling, presumably based on her concepts about crime and skin color, and made a mental inference that the man outside the window had intent to commit a crime.

He seems to me to be fonder of details than of principles, of tithing the mint, anise, and cummin of patronage, and personal questions, than of the weightier matters of empire. He likes rather to talk and tell stories with all sorts of persons who come to him for all sorts of purposes than to give his mind to the noble and manly duties of his great post. It is not difficult to detect that this is the feeling of his cabinet. He has a kind of shrewdness and common sense, mother wit, and slipshod, low-leveled honesty, that made him a good Western jury lawyer. But he is an unutterable calamity to us where he is. Only the army can save us.” If there was

It was Ephialtes, in fact, who initiated democratic reforms that involved paying citizens for jury service. Shortly afterwards, he was assassinated (allegedly by his political opponents), and Pericles, his second-in-command, then took over. So, although it was hardly the ideal omen, we could say that Ephialtes was the true originator of the basic income, or at least the ‘citizen’s income’ variant. The essence of ancient Greek democracy was that the citizens were expected to participate in the polis, the political life of the city. Pericles instituted a sort of basic income grant that rewarded them for their time and was intended to enable the plebs – the contemporary equivalent of the precariat – to take part. The payment was not conditional on actual participation, which was nevertheless seen as a moral duty. Sadly, this enlightened system of deliberative democracy, facilitated by the basic income, was overthrown by an oligarchic coup in 411 BC. The road was blocked for a very long time.

The law has now done its part, and the Queen of England, her crown and Government in Ireland, are now secure pursuant to Act of Parliament. I have done my part also. Three months ago I promised Lord Clarendon, and his government, in this country, that I would provoke him into his courts of justice, as places of this kind are called, and that I would force him publicly and notoriously to pack a Jury against me to convict me, or else that if I would walk out a free man from this dock, to meet him in another field. My lord, I knew I was setting my life on that cast; but I warned him that in either event the victory would be with me, and the victory is with me. Neither the jury, nor the judges, nor any other man in this court, presumes to imagine that it is a criminal who stands in this dock. I have kept my word. "I have shown what the law is made of in Ireland. I have shown that her Majesty's Government sustains itself in Ireland by packed juries by partisan judges, by perjured sheriffs. I have acted all through this business, from the first, under a strong sense of duty. I do not repent anything I have done: and I believe that the course which I have opened is only commenced, The Roman who saw his hand burning to ashes before the tyrant, promised that three hundred should follow out his enterprise, Can I not promise for one, for two, for three, aye, for hundreds?

One more thing, gentlemen, before I quit. Thomas Jefferson once said that all men are created equal, a phrase that the Yankees and the distaff side of the Executive branch in Washington are fond of hurling at us. There is a tendency in this year of grace, 1935, for certain people to use this phrase of context, to satisfy all conditions. The most ridiculous example I can think of is that people who run public education promote the stupid and idle along with the industrious—because all men are created equal, educators will gravely tell you, the children left behind suffer terrible feelings of inferiority. We know all men are not created equal in the sense some people would have us believe—some people are smarter than others, some people have more opportunity because they’re born with it, some men make more money than others, some ladies make better cake than others—some people are born gifted beyond the normal scope of men. But there is one way in this country which all men are created equal—there is one human institution that makes a pauper the equal of a Rockefeller, the stupid man equal of an Einstein, and an ignorant man equal of any college president. That institution, gentlemen, is a court. It can be the Supreme Court of the United States or the humblest J.P. court in the land, or this honourable court which you serve. Our courts have their faults, as does any human constitution, but in this country our courts are the great levellers, and in our courts all men are created equal. I’m no idealist to believe firmly in the integrity of our courts and in the jury system—that is no ideal to me, it is a living, working reality. Gentlemen, a court is no better than each man of you sitting before me on this jury. A court is only as sound as its jury, and a jury is only as sound as the men who make it up. I am confident that you gentlemen will review without passion the evidence you have heard, come to a decision, and restore this defendant to his family. In the name of God, do your duty.

But even democracies like ours are rife with corruption. The founding fathers had the right idea. They never envisioned professional politicians. They wanted citizen legislators, leaving their farms for a few years to serve their fellow man. A civic responsibility like jury duty. But under our current system, you almost have to be a megalomaniac to have interest in entering the sewer that is politics. And success in this realm requires that backstabbing, shamelessness, lying, and manipulation become an art form.

Everyone goes through life trying not to get in the way, staying out of the fights, ignoring what's unpleasant or uncomfortable, and the world continues devolving into a greater mess because no one wants to stand up for anything. Everyone hides in their houses, lies to avoid jury duty, lets other people vote and then complains because the world has gone crazy on them. The outcome is a world being run by insane people, and when someone smart and strong comes along to try and make sense out of the mess, he's overpowered by the noise of the screaming weirdos. No one sees or hears him. They drown him out, and the downward spiral continues.

The coroner summed up at considerably length and with commendable simplicity. His manner suggested that the jury as a whole was certifiable as mentally unsound, but that he knew his duty and would perform it in the teeth of stupidity.

A general ban on corrupt action does not unduly intrude on the President’s responsibility to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.” U.S. CONST. ART II, §§ 3.1090 To the contrary, the concept of “faithful execution” connotes the use of power in the interest of the public, not in the office holder’s personal interests. See 1 Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language 763 (1755) (“faithfully” def. 3: “[w]ith strict adherence to duty and allegiance”). And immunizing the President from the generally applicable criminal prohibition against corrupt obstruction of official proceedings would seriously impair Congress’s power to enact laws “to promote objectives within [its] constitutional authority,” Administrator of General Services, 433 U.S. at 425—i.e., protecting the integrity of its own proceedings and the proceedings of Article III courts and grand juries.

In Texas, as it turns out, there is no law that mandates an employer must pay his or her employee if they are called to jury duty. Some employers do it out of a sense of civic duty; others do not.

lies are all any of them have.

enemy of my enemy is probably still an asshole.

Lies, huh? The lies we tell ourselves.

Passing the light of life on to another is the best anyone can hope for.

Russia, we have a saying: У каждой дороги два направления—Every road has two directions.

the enemy of my enemy is probably still an asshole.

Death is never clean. People shun death because it’s unpleasant. It makes us feel uneasy, but that’s precisely why we shouldn’t turn away. If we want to celebrate life, we have to accept death.

Nothing ever really prepares you for that moment. No amount of time on the range. You can pop paper targets all day long. Damn, it is different when there’s a living, breathing human at the other end of the barrel.

It consisted of the privilege and duty to attend the assembly, speak in debates, judge the arguments, take sides and vote, with the further possibility of serving as a magistrate or on a jury, if required. Ancient liberty did not tolerate indifference to the political process. The public thing, res publica, was everything.

there is one way in this country in which all men are created equal—there is one human institution that makes a pauper the equal of a Rockefeller, the stupid man the equal of an Einstein, and the ignorant man the equal of any college president. That institution, gentlemen, is a court. It can be the Supreme Court of the United States or the humblest J.P. [justice of the peace] court in the land, or this honorable court which you serve. Our courts have their faults, as does any human institution, but in this country our courts are the great levelers, and in our courts all men are created equal. I’m no idealist to believe firmly in the integrity of our courts and in the jury system—that is no ideal to me, it is a living, working reality. Gentlemen, a court is no better than each man of you sitting before me on this jury. A court is only as sound as its jury, and a jury is only as sound as the men who make it up. I am confident that you gentlemen will review without passion the evidence you have heard, come to a decision, and restore this defendant to his family. In the name of God, do your duty.

Publications aren’t the only forms of expression now governed by Hazelwood’s ruling that speech can be limited when administrators claim ownership of the statement and think it’s “unsuitable.” Courts have applied the standard to plays, homework assignments, team mascots, and even cheer-leading.62 A cheerleader in Texas was kicked off the squad after she refused to cheer for a basketball player whom she had accused of sexually assaulting her at a party. (He and another boy had been arrested, but a grand jury had refused to indict them.) Her suit was thrown out by a federal district judge and a three-judge panel on the Fifth Circuit, which cited Hazelwood among other factors, noting, “In her capacity as cheerleader, [she] served as a mouthpiece through which [the school] could disseminate speech.” The school, the judges ruled, “had no duty to promote [her] message by allowing her to cheer or not cheer, as she saw fit.”63

When you go to court, you're putting yourself in the hands of 12 people who weren't smart enough to get out of jury duty!!

When you go into court, remember you are putting yourself in the hands of twelve people who weren’t smart enough to get out of jury duty.

Next door is Partner, a hulking, heavily armed guy who wears black suits and takes me everywhere. Partner is my driver, bodyguard, confidant, paralegal, caddie, and only friend. I earned his loyalty when a jury found him not guilty of killing an undercover narcotics officer. We walked out of the courtroom arm in arm and have been inseparable ever since. On at least two occasions, off-duty cops have tried to kill him. On one occasion, they came after me. We’re still standing. Or perhaps I should say we’re still ducking.

There were very few things that Jesse Classen was completely sure of: seafood chowder, Will Eisner, and that one Savage Garden hit from the nineties that he still swore was great. He believed in the American justice system, but like the majority of Americans he clung to the hope that he would never have to be selected for jury duty. He also believed in Bigfoot, even though he knew there had never once been a shred of concrete evidence to support the creature’s actual existence.

The founding fathers had the right idea. They never envisioned professional politicians. They wanted citizen legislators, leaving their farms for a few years to serve their fellow man. A civic responsibility like jury duty. But under our current system, you almost have to be a megalomaniac to have interest in entering the sewer that is politics. And success in this realm requires that backstabbing, shamelessness, lying, and manipulation become an art form.

Never saw a point in showing up for jury duty. I already know I’m going to vote guilty.” Ari’s mouth made a tiny O, and she put her hand to her heart. “What about justice?” “It is justice. Whoever they are, they’re guilty of making me show up for jury duty.

I only subpoena folks for jury duty that I know will be fair...

But even democracies like ours are rife with corruption. The founding fathers had the right idea. They never envisioned professional politicians. They wanted citizen legislators, leaving their farms for a few years to serve their fellow man. A civic responsibility like jury duty. But under our current system, you almost have to be a megalomaniac to have interest in entering the sewer that is politics. And success in this realm requires that backstabbing, shamelessness, lying, and manipulation become an art form.” He

up. I kind of hoped jury duty lasted

Everyone is motivated by something. Understand their hierarchy of needs, and you’ll understand their next move.

In 2012, a 9 year old Massachusetts boy was summoned for jury duty. He was encouraged to attend jury selection by his father who assured him that it’s a day off from school and that he would have lunch.

Are all nations drunk on their own ego? Are they blind to their own humanity?

When Clark and Daniel visited Richard in the county jail that day, he said he didn’t want to go forward with the trial and his lawyers should demand a mistrial. There was no way, he insisted, the jurors could not be influenced by the murder of a fellow juror. He pointed out that the case was not about forgery, or a stock swindle; it was about murder, and he was being tried for murder. “There’s no fucking way they won’t be affected against me!” Clark, Daniel, and Salinas agreed wholeheartedly, and they promised Richard they’d prepare a motion for mistrial. Amid a packed courtroom, Clark told the judge that the defense wanted the jury to have a period of at least a week to recuperate. If the judge wasn’t inclined to give them a week, Clark asked that the jurors be polled to see if they could still be impartial. He had been in contact with two psychiatrists, Dr. Jo ’Ellan Dimitrius and Dr. Carlo Webber, and they had both unequivocally advised him it would be wrong and improper to let this jury sit in judgment of a murder defendant without their being polled. He reminded the judge that the jurors had become “as close as siblings, husbands and wives.” Halpin didn’t agree. He didn’t want any delay and polling the jurors would just serve “to stir up their emotions.” Tynan decided to bring out the jury foreman and get his opinion about the capability of the jury to go on with an impartial deliberation. Foreman Rodriguez was summoned and Tynan queried him about the jury’s ability to move forward. Rodriguez, a mustachioed man with very black hair, said, “I feel it is somewhat tranquil, but it is—I feel that we can probably continue today.” “They all seem to be able to carry out their duties, then, as jurors?” asked the judge. “Right. Everyone appears to have it behind them.” “I am delighted to hear that,” Tynan proclaimed, an audible sigh of relief coming from him, and called for the jury to be brought out. He announced he was going to allow the trial to go forward. He looked at the defense table and said, “If there’s any objection from the defense, I’ll hear it now.” Richard leaned forward and said: “I have an objection. I think that is fucked up!” The bailiff closed in. The press, not knowing what Richard would do next, leaned forward. Daniel calmed Richard and told Tynan the defense objected strenuously to the deliberations going on with this jury.

Elizabeth Montgomery.

The most famous ruler of this period was Hammurabi, who lived circa 1810–1750 BCE. He is best known for the Code of Hammurabi—a set of laws inscribed on a black basalt pillar that now stands in the Louvre Museum. Hammurabi’s code specifies the rate of interest on silver at 20% and on barley at 33⅓%. What is most important about the code is not what is says but what it represents. The code is a uniform legal framework for the entire Babylonian empire. It covered everything from criminal law to family law, commercial practice to property rights. It details a range of punishments for transgressions, methods of dispute resolution, and attributions of fault for various offenses. It specifies the roles of judge, jury, witnesses, plaintiffs, and defendants. It recognizes and elaborates the rights of ownership of property, including rights to lease and rights of eminent domain. It specifies the role of the written document in a contractual obligation, the necessity of receipts, and what should be done if they do not exist. It specifies legal tender. It describes the obligations of merchants, brokers, and agents and their fiduciary duties and limits to their liabilities in case of attack or theft. It places limits on the term of debt indenture (three years). In short, it creates a comprehensive, uniform framework for commerce.

The city is an agoric-annealing participatory democracy with a limited liability constitution. Its current executive agency is a weakly godlike intelligence that chooses to associate with human-equivalent intelligences: This agency is colloquially known as “Hello Kitty,” “Beautiful Cat,” or “Aineko,” and may manifest itself in a variety of physical avatars if corporeal interaction is desired. (Prior to the arrival of “Hello Kitty,” the city used a variety of human-designed expert systems that provided suboptimal performance.) The city’s mission statement is to provide a mediatory environment for human-equivalent intelligences and to preserve same in the face of external aggression. Citizens are encouraged to participate in the ongoing political processes of determining such responses. Citizens also have a duty to serve on a jury if called (including senatorial service), and to defend the city.

During oral arguments, Howard Wimberley, assistant attorney general for Texas, presented the state’s two-class theory, which had been used in previous trials to explain why Mexican Americans were not called for jury duty. Wimberley argued that in Texas there were only two races, Blacks and whites, and only Blacks on occasion needed the government’s protection from hostile whites.

Who am I kidding? It’s a wonderful feeling to walk into a shop and see your life story on display, even when customers are striding past it in search of the latest Grisham. My mood lightened further when, just about this time, I was summoned to jury duty. Walking into the cavernous room at the DC courthouse where prospective jurors are made to cool their heels, I sat down next to a young woman. After a moment, she gave me a sidelong glance, as strangers in such a situation will do. I peered at the volume she was holding in her lap—Madam Secretary. The young woman did a double take, our eyes met, we bumped fists, and I yearned on the spot to adopt her.

Would you want to be judged by people too stupid to get out of jury duty?

Someone’s gotta do it. No one’s gonna do it. So I’ll do it. Your honor, I rise in defense of drunken astronauts. You’ve all heard the reports, delivered in scandalized tones on the evening news or as guaranteed punch lines for the late-night comics, that at least two astronauts had alcohol in their systems before flights. A stern and sober NASA has assured an anxious nation that this matter, uncovered by a NASA-commissioned study, will be thoroughly looked into and appropriately dealt with. To which I say: Come off it. I know NASA has to get grim and do the responsible thing, but as counsel for the defense—the only counsel for the defense, as far as I can tell—I place before the jury the following considerations: Have you ever been to the shuttle launchpad? Have you ever seen that beautiful and preposterous thing the astronauts ride? Imagine it’s you sitting on top of a 12-story winged tube bolted to a gigantic canister filled with 2 million liters of liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen. Then picture your own buddies—the “closeout crew”—who met you at the pad, fastened your emergency chute, strapped you into your launch seat, sealed the hatch and waved smiling to you through the window. Having left you lashed to what is the largest bomb on planet Earth, they then proceed 200 feet down the elevator and drive not one, not two, but three miles away to watch as the button is pressed that lights the candle that ignites the fuel that blows you into space. Three miles! That’s how far they calculate they must go to be beyond the radius of incineration should anything go awry on the launchpad on which, I remind you, these insanely brave people are sitting. Would you not want to be a bit soused? Would you be all aflutter if you discovered that a couple of astronauts—out of dozens—were mildly so? I dare say that if the standards of today’s fussy flight surgeons had been applied to pilots showing up for morning duty in the Battle of Britain, the signs in Piccadilly would today be in German. Cut these cowboys some slack. These are not wobbly Northwest Airlines pilots trying to get off the runway and steer through clouds and densely occupied airspace. An ascending space shuttle, I assure you, encounters very little traffic. And for much of liftoff, the astronaut is little more than spam in a can—not pilot but guinea pig. With opposable thumbs, to be sure, yet with only one specific task: to come out alive. And by the time the astronauts get to the part of the journey that requires delicate and skillful maneuvering—docking with the international space station, outdoor plumbing repairs in zero-G—they will long ago have peed the demon rum into their recycling units.

No one knows you're gone. The police still want donations from you And they summoned you for jury duty. The Economist wants you to take advantage of an early renewal offer And so does National Geographic. An acquaintance asks how you are doing (I shake my head) And a new friend wonders About your picture on my phone. They didn't know you. Because if they did, They would know That it is a different world now.

When you go into court you are putting your fate into the hands of twelve people who weren't smart enough to get out of jury duty.

Words alone are not an act of aggression which permits the use of deadly force, nor can the placing of a hand in a pocket be considered an act of aggression although, when considered together, such actions may foster an apprehension of danger which would support the use of deadly force in self-defense.” The judge’s statement sums up nicely the relationship between words and furtive gestures, but makes clear that it is up to the jury to decide whether John's words turned his furtive gesture into a hostile act.

People who shoot other people don’t get to make the final decision about how serious the threat is. The law gives that job to the police, the prosecutor, the judge, and the jury. The point cannot be emphasized too often, because the facts determine how dangerous the threat is and what force is permitted in response to it, and what the facts are is influenced by who gets to decide them.

States following this approach say that reasonable behavior is what a prudent person would have done or believed in the same or similar circumstances. Where do these states find such a prudent person? They crowd source it. It’s called a jury. Juries make up a cross section of the community’s members, and reflect collectively its values, beliefs, and its judgment about what is reasonable behavior.

You can’t trust juries. Take it from me.” “You don’t believe in the system, that it, Luber?” “Would you want to be judged by people too stupid to get out of jury duty?

In Oklahoma, and perhaps elsewhere too, Klan membership was automatically suspended for any man called for jury duty, so that he could deny it and not be excluded for bias.

In Lidar, a group of men had a fight in the car park of a pub.  When two of them got in a car and started to drive off, a third leant in the window of the car and the fight continued.  They drove off with him half in the window and at some point he fell off and suffered injuries from which he died.  The jury were directed in terms of recklessness and the driver was convicted of manslaughter.  The CA upheld the conviction, possibly relying on Lord Mackay’s reference in Adomako to it being “perfectly appropriate” to use the word reckless.  A driver owes a duty to other road users, and his recklessness in driving with someone hanging on to the car would be covered by the term gross negligence.  A finding of gross negligence manslaughter would have therefore been possible, so it is the rules from Adomako that are important to know. The requirements for gross negligence manslaughter

Yes, juries clearly have the power, but history shows they also have the right and duty, no matter what the legal profession claims. Jury Nullification has long been a critical last defense against authoritarianism. It has a history of blocking the arbitrary power of the state and turning society in the direction of freedom.

But as the Tenth Amendment confirms, “the people” also have “powers.” These powers include suffrage, jury duty, militia service, and other institutions in which the people govern, administer justice, keep order, disapprove of and nullify governmental actions, and otherwise participate in political society. As the Revolution proved, the ultimate power of the people that the Second Amendment helps secure is the ability to take arms to resist oppression and overthrow tyranny. In a constitutional republic, actual exercise of this power of the people would be rendered unnecessary.