Hey ya'll,
Just got done with Jury duty and am finally allowed to talk about it.
It was my first time and we where put on a case and it was interesting.
However I did come away with a reaffirming though and opinion. (quick note I'm not a lawyer and what I say here is an opinion and not official legal advice.)
Do
Not
Talk
To
The
Cops.
Once they read the miranda rights to you. Request an attorney and stay quite.
The case I was on had two crimes that we where judging on. The first one got a not guilty verdict from the jury because the cops frankly did a poor job of providing evidence that despite most of us in the jury being fairly sure the theft had happened there was not enough evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt. In the second alleged crime there was video evidence of the defendant essentially admitting to being an accomplice of the crime and ultimately the Jury had to find the defendant guilty which would have been much harder to come to if the defendant had just maintained his silence.
we took two days to deliberate the case so it wasn't exactly cut and dry and both attorneys did a really good job of defending their clients interests and we had the opportunity to talk to them both together and both of them where unsurprised by the verdict and essentially agreed that with the first crime they didn't have a good case because of lack of care by the police and in the second the defendant essentially shot their chances in the foot by talking to the officer in the squad car.
also not recommended (we do live in a society and rely on people doing their civic duty) but if you want to get out of jury duty, apparently saying you believe all thieves should get their fingers cut off is a great way to get both attorneys to agree you shouldn't be on a jury, at least in my experience this week. It did make one of my favorite absurd highlighted moments of the week to be sure and again I wouldn't recommend it.
