Jury Duty

**vbloke** · 7th June 2006, 06:03 PM

I've been selected for jury duty.

How exciting!

Is there anything I need to know (like no loud shirts or somesuch)?

And can I refuse to swear on the bible and swear on the Principia Mathematica instead?

**Admin** · 7th June 2006, 06:47 PM

I'd love to do jury duty - I think that weighing up evidence and spotting the lawyers' tricks etc. would be great for a skeptic.

You should ask to swear on the Skepdic

**tkingdoll** · 7th June 2006, 07:10 PM

If you tell them you are a skeptic the prosecution will probably ask to have you removed, they don't want people who will consider the evidence and not be swayed by appeals to emotion. A loud shirt or anything singling you out as being 'radical' will also probably result in you not being chosen.

Exciting, though. You don't have to swear on the bible, you can take the (godless) oath instead, it's much longer though and usually takes them ten minutes to find the prompt card. A much funnier thing to do is say you are Jewish, because they then have to go and dig out their old testament for you to swear on.

My sister did JD a few months ago, I'm sure she'd be delighted to repeat the depressing tale of how several of her fellow jurors 'knew' the defendent (a black youth) was guilty because 'he looked it'.

**Admin** · 7th June 2006, 07:18 PM

I'm sure she'd be delighted to repeat the depressing tale of how several of her fellow jurors 'knew' the defendent (a black youth) was guilty because 'he looked it'.

That's why a skeptic would be invaluable in such a jury.

Good point though about not mentioning being a skeptic though.

Mark might not get away with that though, being a recognised media skeptic and all that

**vbloke** · 7th June 2006, 07:39 PM

Originally Posted by John Jackson

Mark might not get away with that though, being a recognised media skeptic and all that

I'll grow a beard and wear dark glasses 8)

**Aardvark** · 7th June 2006, 08:36 PM

Originally Posted by vbloke

Originally Posted by John Jackson

Mark might not get away with that though, being a recognised media skeptic and all that

I'll grow a beard and wear dark glasses 8)

Include a black hat and you can definitely swear on the old testament :D

**Hazen** · 7th June 2006, 11:44 PM

Originally Posted by tkingdoll

My sister did JD a few months ago, I'm sure she'd be delighted to repeat the depressing tale of how several of her fellow jurors 'knew' the defendent (a black youth) was guilty because 'he looked it'.

That is depressing. Imagine you had been falsley accused and were relying on the judgement of your fellow men and women to exonerate you and pea brained air-heads such as these held your fate in their hands.

**Jocky** · 8th June 2006, 11:57 AM

I have been on jury service (about 10 years ago).

IIRC the non-religious oath is called 'affirming'. That's what I did.

I found a jury an interesting but difficult place to be. Of course one wants to make an objective judgement on the strength of the evidence, but realistically a lot of cases come down to one person's word against another's and you (collectively, all 12 of you) have no choice but to decide who you are going to believe. That process is almost inevitably subjective to some extent.

The case I was involved in included a rape charge, and like many cases of that sort it did basically come down who was lying - the alleged victim or the defendant. We chose to believe the victim, and the defendant (a repeat offender, although of course we didn't know that at the time) got Life. There was some corroborative circumstantial evidence to support conviction which was more objective - but by itself it was not clinching.

Of course, subjective judgements made on the basis of somebody's ethnic origin, age or anything like that represents a danger to justice. Get in there and fight the good fight for critical thinking!