If you have done Jury Duty, please describe your experience

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What was the case about?

What was your opinion of the case?

Did you find yourself mostly agreeing or disagreeing with the other jurors?

Did the jurors treat you disrespectfully because you are 'weird' and/or because you favored logic instead of "gut feeling" or intuition?

What was the outcome of the case?

I thought there should be an IQ test for all jurors.

The furthest I got in the Jury Duty process was one time when I was chosen to be on the jury. We sat around in a conference room and chatted while the lawyers tried to negotiate a plea bargain. After about half a day they came to terms and we were sent home. We had waited in a church basement across the road most of the previous day for the jury selection process to begin, so this took a day and a half total.

The case was three guys who had done a home invasion and assault/battery on the home occupants. The case didn't go far enough that I learned anything about why they did it - a drug thing, someone mad at his ex, or what. We were lucky they pled out; we were told the average 1-defendant case takes 3 days, but this would take longer because there were 3 defense lawyers plus the prosecutor all having to question every witness.

The other times I was called to jury duty I was called the evening before and told not to show up, they had enough people already. WooHoo!

Drug possession. I don't remember all the details or the technical language, but I'll recall what I can.

After several hours of waiting in a waiting area, our group was called to be presented the case and evaluated or whatever by the lawyers. After asking several jurors some questions the lawyers got to me and asked me a question. My answer was laughed at for being naive apparently, and I was one of the unlucky ones kept on the jury.

Two cops pursued a man(The defendant) they said was known to have sold drugs and while in pursuit claimed he threw a small folded paper away from him. The folded paper contained a personal amount of illegal drugs in it, I can't remember what the drugs were.

The man and his brother who testified on his behalf claimed the cops were lying, that the drugs weren't his.

Before deliberation we were told this was this man's third strike, if found guilty he would receive the harshest punishment but we were supposed to ignore this piece of information and not to consider it for our decision and some other crap yada yada yada.

Most of us, myself included, thought he was guilty in weight of everything we saw and heard. A few of the others didn't want to just jump up and proclaim him guilty so they made us go over everything several times. I was largely ignored, but others aired my views so no sweat off my back. After 30 minutes we let the officer know we were ready and had the dude we selected make the proclamation of guilt or whatever.

All in all I'm not to happy with the outcome, as I'm against the war on drugs and hate to put someone away for possession. But I have no doubt he was guilty.

I've had the cops plant marijuana at a house I was living in. It was in my young house sharing days and they raided the house because of another girl living there who was involved with heroin. They tried to charge me with it, but the judge believed me that it had been planted.

That's unbelievable. How did you convince the judge the drugs had been planted?

i can not do jury duty because i am autistic.
i was advised of that fact officially (arbitrarily by a psychiatrist who mentioned it in passing). it is not that i do not want to do it, but i am not considered mentally able to rise to that task.

i also do not constitute a full "witness" value because my perceptions are questionable in a court of law. that is because they may be impaired by the fact i am autistic.
no person wants an autistic person on their jury i would think. the accused would challenge the verdict based upon a "flaw" in the jury if i was in a jury.

i would be surprised if any real asperger person posted about their experience of jury duty.

I've never been on jury duty because I keep getting called when I am not actually living in the state I am called in. So I went to school in Massachusetts, but they called me for jury duty when I was home in New York for the summer, and spending the fall semester in Spain. Then I went to grad school in Pennsylvania and they tried to call me there after I had moved back home to New York after school had finished. I wouldn't actually mind jury duty I don't think, except I'm not driving for hours and hours to do it. Now that I've moved back to PA for a job, NY will probably call me in for jury duty.

Massachusetts really needs to work on their jury selection system- they seem to just pull names off college lists without even bothering to check for eligibility. I knew quite a few foreign kids in college who were called for jury duty- of course, they weren't citizens so they weren't eligible. Also, if they're working off a college list, they should call college kids during the school year, not during the summer when they are back in their home states.

I've been called for Jury Duty 3 times, twice in one city, and once in my current city. The experience varies by location.

In the city I was called in twice in, what we did both times was first the Clerk of Court talked about what was going to happen, procedures, etc, then they showed us a movie about serving on a jury. After all this was done, the first time I went, they picked a bunch of juror numbers and mine was one of them so I got to go into a courtroom. They questioned us about what we did for a living, our ages, how long we'd been in the community, if we were familiar with the defendant or the company she was accused of stealing from(it was an embezzlement case), and some other things. After this first round of questions, a bunch of us, including me, were excused and sent back to the waiting area. At around 11:30 or so, we were sent to lunch and told to be back by a certain time. When we all got back, they picked another set of jurors, and sent the rest of us home and we were told we had done our duty and we couldn't be called back before 2 years.

The second time in this same locale, a little over 2 years later, they did the same thing as before, but I didn't get to go to a courtroom. All we did was just sit there all day watching TV. This particular community used what they called a 1 day/1 trial system. Basically, if a juror shows up for one day and they aren't needed, they are considered as having done their service. If they are needed, they serve one trial and are done. The upside of that system is pretty much self explanatory, if they aren't needed they are done in one day, but the downside is once you've served, every 2 years they call you. That is how I got called twice.

In my current city, I got called once in 1998 and I haven't been called since. What was done here is we were called and had jury duty explained to us, saw a film about being a juror, etc., then we were sent off to various waiting areas all day. At the end of the first day, they told us we had to report the next day. The second day they let us go after lunch but told us to call a phone number after 6pm to see if we had to report the next day. When I called I was told I had to report. The day after that, we were released early and told to call in that evening. When I called, the message said we had done our jury service and would be a sent a check for it. The check came around a week later along with a letter saying if I am called before 2 years, to contact them so I could be excused.

On one of the days, we did get taken to sit outside of a courtroom for a civil suit. However, the case was settled at the last minute so we weren't needed. I haven't been called back since. And that's something else odd I'd like to mention. I got called just after I had lived her for 2 years and it took my wife 7 years of living here to get called. There was another man there who was in his 50s and said he lived here all of his life and that was the first time he'd ever been called. I wonder how they decide who gets called and who doesn't. I also have a coworker who has been called several times, and another one who has never been called. It just doesn't make sense.

First time getting called up for jury duty, I wound up as the jury foreperson on a murder trial. This was way before my Aspie dx, just unofficially feeling I was on the wrong planet. That said...

I wound up the foreman mainly by default of no one else wanting to do it. I suck at leading when I'm named the leader, but somehow I'm great at emerging as the leader in leaderless groups.

Being a natural little lawyer (if nowhere close to a professional one), I did feel it more important than ever to stick by my feelings and judgements independent of what others on the jury might think. After all, it's the rest of a man's life on the line here.

The toughest part was when conversations would start to veer off topic. In the interest of diplomacy, I'd allow the veering to a degree before attempting to reign it back to the topic at hand. One man seemed rather impatient with me for this, but I think it was good for the other 10 jurors, so majority won as far as I was concerned!

On the judgement itself here was very little dissent as it was a reasonably clear cut case. There was one woman who was unsure about a directive that we decide whether or not the man had 'reasonable capacity' to know that his actions would likely result in the other man's death. Wanting to help her (and the rest of the impatient jurors) get through that but without unfairly influencing her judgement, I asked, "With all we have learned about him, imagine someone else as the defendant and put the real defendant here in the jury room with us to decide on another case. Would he be largely in agreement with us?" She said that suddenly made a lot of sense and yes, he would have similar capacity to judge as the rest of us.

We gave him 30 years for murder and 20 for armed criminal action.

Even though it was a pretty clear-cut case, even though I am absolutely certain we made the right call, it is very different from hearing about it in the news and saying, "Good; the bastard got what he deserved." From the jury, you see the many lives ruined. The victim and his family, the defendant and his family based on one really bad decision to do too much cocaine that night and become a whipping post for the drug.

But in Missouri at least, you must decide as if the person were straight and sober. "The drug made me do it" is not a defense. This story has become my standard to tell young friends and relatives about why drugs and alcohol are pretty stupid.

Only other time on a jury wasn't nearly so exciting. Injury-on-the-job case and, seeing that the trial was very much not going their way, the company cut a deal with the man before it went to judgement.

- Jo

Called, but I didn't go (the whole autism thingy and interacting with people, not to mention everything else it brings).

I think the spectrum is a bit larger than you give it credit for. If you are truely disabled, it makes sense to skip jury duty. If not, it's your civic duty to participate.

I served as foreman on a DUI case. There were some additional charges, but DUI was the big one. In our case, they randomly selected 12 jurors from the pool and then gave the lawyers a chance to question us. Most of the questions we received had to do with whether or not we knew someone involved in DUI cases and whether or not we could treat a person we didn't know fairly. One woman was disqualified by the judge (and replaced by another random persno) because she had a close friend killed by a drunk driver and couldn't stop crying. Then the lawyers each got to disqualify 3 jurors. So that left us with 6.

I was foreman also because no one else really wanted to do it. It's not like it's complicated, you basically try to get people to talk about each charge and if the verdict seems close, you take a vote and see if it's unanimous. Then you check the appropriate box on the paperwork and move on to the next charge.

We found the defendant guilty of DWAI (lesser charge to DUI) and the rest of the charges. It was strange because the defendant did not testify or call witnesses, so we basically had a one sided argument. I didn't encounter any problems with the other jurors - it was all easy conversation about the facts.

At the end, I had to stand up and annouce the verdicts. Then the judge "polled" each member of the jury to make sure they all still agree with the verdicts. In this case the judge decides the punishment, so we didn't participate in that part.

I told the judge I had AS and failed a social IQ test and he released me from jury duty.

That brings up the question of us being hauled into court. Can we truly have "a jury of our peers" if all those on the autistic spectrum are eliminated?

Actually, the defendant not testifying or presenting evidence happens probably 80% of the time. The defendant has a right to remain silent and does not have to prove anything. The state has the burden of proving the case beyond a reasonable doubt and if a prosecutor even comments on the defendant's failure to take the stand, the result is an automatic mistrial. Usually it is insane to put the defendant on the stand because that subjects him to cross-examination by the state. The only time you would do this is if the defendant is truly innocent, which isn't often. I think though that juries are perplexed as to why a person wouldn't take the stand to give his side of the story.

Last edited by snuuz on 02 Jan 2009, 11:56 am, edited 1 time in total.

I was on a jury that convicted a person of obscenity. Everyone on the jury, except one person, was outraged about the act that took place and thought it was obscene. Two teenagers took pictures of a friend when she was drunk and naked and e-mailed them to other friends. Distributing obscene pictures is technically illegal in Massachusetts, hence the obscenity charge. The one person on the jury was confused about the fact of the case, not the law. In the jury room we made sure she understood the facts and once she did, agreed with the verdict. It was then unanimous.

I loved it. It was a great experience. The trial only lasted about four hours. We arrived at the court room at 7:30 or so, took a break for lunch at 12, and went home at 4:00 pm.