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from the government-of,-by,-and-for-the-people-on-its-deathbed dept.
I've previously mentioned federal whistleblower Peter Van Buren here and his expose on working for minimum wage at a store he called "Bullseye" while his lawsuit wound its way through the court system.
He has now blogged about a part of government which, apparently, hasn't had any new ideas since 1856.
I just wrapped up a couple of days of jury duty.
Note "jury duty", which is very different than serving on a jury. I didn't do that. Being on an actual jury involves making a careful judgment on someone's life. I did jury duty, which involves waiting and sitting and waiting, while watching your last hopeful images of democracy fade away.
[...] It was about 10:30 before a guy who said he'd been doing this exact same job for 34 years began speaking to us as if we were slow children or fairly smart puppies. The bulk of his explanation was about how most of us would get our $40 a day jury payment, and the many exceptions to that. It was then lunch.
[After lunch, we waited for the rest of the day but] were unneeded. We were dismissed until re-summoned tomorrow morning.
[...] The next morning, [...] I got called to jury selection, along with about 20 [others who had been waiting in the same semi-air-conditioned room]. We were brought to an unventilated hallway to wait for 30 minutes before entering an actual courtroom. [...] We did an olde timey swearing in, and then were invited to visit the judge and explain any "issues" we might have that would prevent us from serving on a jury.
It was pathetic. Nearly everyone bitched, whined, begged, and complained that they could not do it.
[...] I got bounced out of the jury selection in the next phase. Both the prosecutor and the defense attorney asked us questions about our jobs, our thoughts on law enforcement (especially if we trusted police to testify honestly), and the like. I answered every question completely candidly and was thrown back to wait three more hours until "jury duty" was over. The only way I could have served would have been to lie.
[...] This system is a mess. [...] The 19th century notion that everyone simply must find a way to put their life on hold does not work. [...] Telling single parents to just figure out child care, Wall Street brokers to just not care about millions of dollars, students to just miss class, and people who work freelance or hourly to just suck it up and lose their already limited income is not 2016.
If assigned to an actual jury, you stay with the trial until it is done. [...] If you pull a murder case or one of the many medical malpractice suits, it could be a month+. [...] For $40 a day [...]--minus the minimum five dollars [that] commuting to court and back costs, means you are getting about half the minimum wage in New York, and even that takes six to eight weeks to be sent to you. [...] If you are already living on the margins, you cannot afford to serve on a jury.
[...] A lot of folks whose English was poor or who sounded as if they did not get much of an education had no excuse the judge would accept [to be dismissed].
[...] My limited window into all of this suggests juries might just be made up of people who can't get out of it. Hard to say how bitter that makes them feel listening to an actual case.
(Score: 1) by GmanTerry on Monday August 22 2016, @04:33AM
I was called in 2009 for Jury Duty. When I got there we were told that it wasn't a trial, we were there for Grand Jury Duty. That is four months of two full days a week. They needed 16 jurors. I can completely understand the problem with a citizen being ask to give up two days a week for four months. Almost everyone wanted out. If you work for a company that doesn't pay you full pay on jury duty you are screwed. No family can afford to take that sort of a pay cut. We were paid $12.00 a day plus $0.44 milage from the center of your zip code to the courthouse. I believe mine gave me about $37.00 a week. That was for two full eight hour days each week. The judge went through each person in the jury pool and most couldn't take two days off of work for four months. So what do you end up with? Mostly retired folks. I think we had four people who were actually working on our Grand Jury. The County has four Grand Juries running at all times. We were given about four cases per day but some cases took a whole day and a few longer. We probably heard 160 plus cases in the four months I served. The judge said our jury was one of the few he has seen that ended with all the original jurors, using none of the alternates.
However, that said, the old saying that you can indict a ham sandwich is true. All we hear is the prosecutor and the cops. Out of all the cases we returned, and all but one were "True Bills" which means they were referred to be tried. We added one count to an indictment where a woman was selling drugs out of her car and had a baby with her. We added a count of child endangerment. The one we let go was a 12 year old child who touched his step sister's breasts while she was sleeping. He confessed and the State wanted to put him on the lifetime sex offender rolls. Twelve of us thought destroying the life of a 12 year old was unacceptable in a civilized society. It takes 12 of the 16 to make a judgement. Four Grand Jurors thought he should be labeled a sex offender. When we deliberated the phrase "Jury Nullification" was talked about. I am not in any way a liberal but to destroy a life before it begins is uncivilized. Every day it happens. That is the basic story of my four months from 2009 to 2010.
All that aside, I actually learned a lot and enjoyed the companionship of my fellow jurors.
Since when is "public safety" the root password to the Constitution?