I was in jury selection with an ex cop. He admitted to a pro-police bias, and he was dismissed by the defense. I got up and copped to an anti-cop bias. I was dismissed by the prosecution.
i got out by saying i had a philosophical issue with courts as a whole and didn't want to punish someone (a minority on some drug charge), judge asked me if i could respect the distinction between guilty/innocent and punishment and i was like 'nah' and they dismissed me lol
That's days off work and depending on the judge you could end up facing criminal charges. That's if you're completely obstinate and refuse to convict. At most you'll cause a mistrial and they'll just repeat the process again with a new jury in a year. At worst you piss off the judge and get yourself charged with criminal contempt if they feel it can be argued, which I believe is the only crime you can be imprisoned for indefinitely without a trial. A judge can throw you in jail until you agree to comply.
That's not true. I used that and it didn't work. It was a couple years ago. In the same form - I also said I was unwilling to be a room with unmasked people due to covid. That didn't work either.
so the prosecutor did not care that you would refuse to convict even if he proved the case beyond a shadow of a doubt? interesting way to prosecute a case when doing jury selection....
It may work, but you now have government witnesses to you saying you hate everyone to the point it affects your mental capacities to think and judge and must be excused from society. It will come back to bite you if anything happens in the future.
My dad got booted from a jury because he was a volunteer firefighter and it was an arson case.
Apparently they didn't want people prejudiced against arsonists.
I get the idea that a firefighter would be opossed to the idea of somebody who setting fires but by that same logic that should disqualify everybody who isnt a clinically diagnosed psycopath from ever serving on a jury for a murder case in the event they're going into the case with a negative perception of people who kill other people.
My case was lawsuit (slip and fall in a restaurant) and when they asked the pool if you think there should be caps on lawsuit payouts, I shot my hand up. We had a 15 minute break and I was the only one not called back in.
So the real trick is to signal that you're not in the lawyer's monetary best interest.
I've only been called to a grand jury summons and they don't tell you what the case is going to be about but you know it's going to be related to the state. The only way to get out was to just say you don't trust the police. Because they're obviously the one prosecuting. This is in Michigan and it was the alleged kidnappers plot I found out later.
The best way to avoid jury duty is to not show up. Tons of people don't show up. They aren't going to put warrants out for everyone who ignores a jury summons.
"Real" crimes (that are currently prosecuted in AES states and would continue to be prosecuted if a worldwide communist revolution succeeded tomorrow) do happen. An unfortunately common example is domestic violence. Committing to throw any trial in favor of the defense is contrarianism, not a theoretically sound approach for how one might wring some actual justice out of our shitty legal system.