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25 Jury Expert 4 (2013)
Avoiding Jury Duty: Psychological and Legal Perspectives

handle is hein.journals/jurexp25 and id is 4 raw text is: Avoiding Jury Duty: Psychological and Legal Perspectives by David M. Sams,Tess M.S. Neal, and Stanley L. Brodsky IT WAS THE FIRST TIME we had ever seen an echo effect so dramatically demonstrated. The jurors had been brought in panels of 14 for voir dire in the capital murder trial scheduled to begin the following week. One woman on the jury panel explained she had been taught in her church not to sit in judgment of others, and that only God could do that. She said serving on a jury that would judge somebody of a crime would go against her religion. Both sets of attorneys and the trial consultants furiously scribbled notes. When the questioning continued, a man who was two positions behind her in the alphabetically-ordered venire piped up loudly, Me, too!. He continued, What she said. I don't judge others. It's my religion. In response to a series of questions, he stayed with his answer, even though it was clear to the judge, attorneys, and observers that he had leapt on her statement because it was so compelling and tried to make it his. In one form or another, this scenario of evasion repeats itself in courtrooms all over the country. Jurors are called to serve. When and if they show up, they often have a constructed story to evade jury duty. Sometimes the stories sound rational on their surface. It would be a financial hardship to miss work. They have caretaking obligations with ill or aging family members. They have physical handicaps that would interfere with sitting for long periods or they have difficulty hearing. Other times their stories are not compelling, like this man who echoed the religious woman. In this article, we provide observations about how and why people try to get out of jury duty and then offer suggestions for selecting jurors. As we will explain, citizens who are not at all eager to be on juries, just as those who are overly eager to be on juries, may not be the best people to have deciding your case. Jurors and Excuses Although the jury can be linked back to the participatory democracy that first emerged in Greece in the sixth century, it was not until the signing of the Magna Carta during the reign of King John in the 1200's in England that the right to a jury of one's peers surfaced. As early democracies developed, the use of the jury became the chosen method of administering justice (Sward, 2001). Participation in the legal system by free men was a method to ensure fairness and to prevent state corruption from creeping into judicial systems. This use of checks and January/February 2013 - Volume 25, Issue 1 [helurvexperl.com 4

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