Gun blogger and jury duty
Not gonna happen, once you mention fully informed or libertarian anything. And the prosecutors and defenders will google you. Convictions are usually determined by people with subscriptions to People magazine, not folks who follow politics.
October 4th, 2011 at 6:33 pm
Not quite accurate, Uncle. You are still going to be summoned for jury duty, you just won’t be assigned to a criminal jury after the voire dire is done with. OTOH, you may just what the DA is looking for for Grand Jury, where the “hammer-down” personality is highly sought after. Hiunt, Grand Jury service is usually a full month, ordinary jury duty as little as a day, hardly ever over two weeks.
Then, there is always civil-action jury service. Want to be REALLY bored? Try listening to endless parades of “experts” all trying to convince you that something that is improbable happened, or something that is probable shouldn’t have.
Just don’t even THINK the word “nullify”, or then you might actually get to miss the whole wonderful experience.
October 4th, 2011 at 7:33 pm
Why would you mention any of that?
The one time I was up for jury duty, and could actually go, I never got seated but was on one panel for selection. (It was a wrongful-death suit against a school district, for poor placement of a school bus stop where a kid was hit by a reckless driver and killed; no, absolutely NO winners in this case.)
Now maybe it would be different in a high-profile case with political implications, but voir dire involved nothing of the sort you might imagine, and not the least opportunity for me to spout of about FIJA, etc, unless I had wanted to raise my hand and make it an issue.
October 4th, 2011 at 9:10 pm
Daughter was disappointed the time she was called for duty: it looked like an interesting case, but when the defense heard
Dad in LE
Grandpa in LE
Brother-in-law in LE
Studied forensics in college
they couldn’t get rid of her fast enough.
October 5th, 2011 at 12:21 am
folks who you wouldn’t expect end up on juries all the time, because there are candidates even worse for the specifics of the case, or just lame lawyers on one side.
October 5th, 2011 at 12:26 am
I am probably off-base here, but I would do jury duty and carry a dollar size printout of 18 USC 1001 (many mirrors of this code exist at the federal level and your local jurisdiction) –
To paraphrase, ‘It is a criminal offense to knowingly make a false or misleading statement, document, etc.’
If things get at odds in the deliberation room; depending on which way you want to swing; you can always express what is clearly legal (vs nullification); that it is clearly legal to deduct mortgage interest from your taxes, so you do; it is also legal for party in a judicial proceeding to, per 18 USC 1001, to knowingly make false or misleading statements:
[making false statements] “does not apply to a party to a judicial proceeding, or that party’s counsel, for statements, representations, writings or documents submitted by such party or counsel to a judge or magistrate in that proceeding.” [have not really noticed, but it seems that the Jury sits in box while the counsels communicate with the Judge…]
Now you proved it is legal for the ‘parties’ to present false testimony, and neither are credible by law, you can get that pepperoni anchovy pizza you been wanting.
Or you all can just acquit/convict and go home.