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No Skeptics on the Jury, Please

Orphia Nay said:
It would depend on the town's population and the type of courts that operate there.

I've only been called once for jury duty and that was while I was actually working at the courthouse, so I didn't have to do it.

Soon after that, the higher courts stopped sitting in our town, so nobody here has to do duty as there are no trials held here
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It surprises me that some citizens are exempt from jury duty based on location. Here, if you have a driver's license or registered to vote, you're automatically in the pool - whether municipal, county, state or federal.
 
PitPat said:
It surprises me that some citizens are exempt from jury duty based on location. Here, if you have a driver's license or registered to vote, you're automatically in the pool - whether municipal, county, state or federal.
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I think there is a distance limit of 70kms radius to the courthouse.
 
I would defer to the judgment of my defense counsel in choosing jury trial or bench trial.

A bench trial seems riskier since your fate is in the hands of one person. And I have heard enough stories about crazy judges that I think it would be very important to know a lot about which judge is actually going to preside. At least with a jury trial you need to get 12 people to agree, which reduces the risk to the defendant, I would imagine.
 
When I was a professor, I used to get tapped for jury duty regularly - about fifteen times - and actually served, I think, only four times. My lawyer told me that attorneys didn't much like teachers as jurors. I retired and we relocated to a different county. In the fall I got what I thought was a jury summons. Nope, it was a letter saying I've been taken off our new county's list because I'm too old. Yet I'm much younger than a Presidential candidate.
 
I've been summoned six or seven times. Called in five times. Actually served four times.

There was one time that I found pretty interesting.

They gave all of the potential jurors three sheets of paper with questions and then one by one asked them if they had a yes answer to any question. Reading the questions one broke from one page to another and, probably due to some copy/paste/editing error the actual wording did not make any sense. It was literally not a sentence, or a question. And I was like the seventh or eigth juror to be asked. So first thing I did when it was my turn was said "Question six does not make any sense, I can't answer it."

The Judge was annoyed and said, "It's a yes or no question, how would you answer it." I said, "It's not even a question its some words followed by a question mark and doesn't make any sense." (At this point all the jurors and lawyers started fumbling through the questioniare). The judge was even more annoyed and said "We've been using this questionaire in trial after trial for years, there's no problem with it." I said something like "I hope you don't have to redo those, because that question makes no sense."

Now the judge starts reading it, and calls the attorneys to a sidebar. Then says OK, you have a point, the question is "" what's your answer?

"No"

"Fine, what about the other questions?"
Some of the questions were specific to that case (had I been near the crime scene? Yes, it was on my commute to work some days), others were generic (do you have family members in the criminal justice system (police, courts, prisons, etc.) Yes (a couple cousins are cops, dad was a lawyer and a prosecutor and a judge.)

After answering the questionnaire, each side gets to ask the juror a few questions.

Defense attorney: "You answered yes to two questions, can you explain?"

I explained.

Defense attorney: "Is there anything about that experience near the crime scene or having family members in criminal justice that would leave you unbiased (sic) for this case?"

I answered "There nothing about that which would make me BIASED for this case.

To my surprise defense attorney said, were fine juror. Prosecutors same thing.
 
I served on a jury with a women claiming to be a skeptic. Yeah right. The case was cut and dried. The kid was guilty of armed robbery of a grocery store. They had a video tape of him doing the robbery. We felt sorry for him because he cried on the stand about disappointing his "grandma", and he seemed a bit retarded. He had driven the 5 minutes to his home where he was arrested. Our -skeptic said it would have taken him longer "with traffic and all". She asked if we could have lunch while she decided. We did, and she voted for Guilt.
 
wasapi said:
I served on a jury with a women claiming to be a skeptic. Yeah right. The case was cut and dried. The kid was guilty of armed robbery of a grocery store. They had a video tape of him doing the robbery. We felt sorry for him because he cried on the stand about disappointing his "grandma", and he seemed a bit retarded. He had driven the 5 minutes to his home where he was arrested. Our -skeptic said it would have taken him longer "with traffic and all". She asked if we could have lunch while she decided. We did, and she voted for Guilt.
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Isn't that strange? He's literally on tape doing it, and some people focus on some weird point that's practically irrelevant like how long it would have taken him to drive home. There was something like that in the jury that I sat on. The defense "stipulated" that the defendant had been driving drunk, and when it went to the jury someone started asking about whether we could see the breathalyzer results or something like that, just to be sure. When the jury retires to consider its verdict, that means that all of the evidence that is going to be presented had already been presented. The jury foreman (I don't remember why he was foreman, maybe just the fact that he happened to be the first juror selected) said something like "there's no dumb questions, we'll ask the judge." I remember thinking to myself that it's actually a dumb question, but I held my tongue. Just as I thought, the judge had to explain that since the defense had already "stipulated" that this was true, we didn't need to see any evidence to reach that conclusion. The prosecutor seemed to have a look of concern on his face that this was even a question in the minds of some member(s) of the jury. In the end, of course, we reached the correct verdict, but some members had various concerns that they needed to talk through.
 
During my years of litigation (both as a 1986-1987 defendant and from 1994-2012 as the Plaintiff) with psychic actress Noreen Renier, my litigation was across more than a dozen courts including many different state courts, and six federal courts. There are various court standards where both attorneys for the Plaintiff and Defendant can select to dismiss a potential jury member. Even the number and type of rejections varies. In one case we found the process of selecting a jury very difficult as the judge himself rejected almost as many potential jury members as either legal team. When potential jurors responded that they would be skeptical of claims to communicate with the dead, or several other pseudoscience claims, the judge himself would reject that potential juror. One potential juror admitted in answering that she would consider a person a fraud if they claimed to communicate back and forth with trees, and would reject any claims that trees could be considered eye witnesses. The judge rejected that juror as "not being open to factors still outside of science" and therefore unable to make an unbiased decision as a juror. In the same court three potential jurors who were identified as reading only one "newspaper" -- the National Enquirer grocery-line tabloid -- were, in his view, open to selecting media that carried 'new and different' views. Two of those were ultimately selected to be on the jury as my attorney had already rejected our limit. It was the only jury case --- in a small county court with a six member jury --- that I lost. And my appeal in part on that court process was rejected. Even today science and facts continue to be far less exciting than fantastic paranormal tales inside a court room.
 
Myriad said:
I had an interesting conversation recently with a judge, a plaintiff's lawyer, and some lawyers for the defense regarding the nature of skepticism and the import of being an avowed skeptic on ones ability to render an impartial decision in a civil court case. It took place in a courtroom here in Massachusetts. This of course was a voir dire of myself as a prospective juror in said civil case. Judges can dismiss potential jurors based on potential reasons for bias (e.g. if the person is an acquaintance of either party, an employee, has been the victim of a similar mishap, has read about the case in the news, etc.) and either side can also object to jurors with or without cause, including based on strategy, who they think will be sympathetic to their side. The case was a personal injury liability claim by a customer against a regional retail business. (Details are omitted to protect everything from everything else.)

I had happened to mention on the juror questionnaire that I had over 21,000 posts on a skeptics' forum online. I might not have been required to mention this, because I do not personally believe it has any adverse effect whatsoever on my ability to assess the evidence offered in a trial and render an impartial judgment (and that's what the question on the questionnaire asked). Quite the contrary, in fact. But I wasn't certain the parties involved would agree with that, and there was scary language on the questionnaire importuning the complete truth, and I'm no expert on jurisprudence, so I mentioned it anyway. And it appears that was the right thing to do, because all the parties present appeared to take great interest in it.

Some of the more interesting questions, and my answers: Did being a (presumably self-described) skeptic mean I would need "more" evidence to believe the plaintiff's case? Well, yes, that's practically the definition of skeptic. However, I carefully explained, that would apply to both sides equally, and also it's not really about the amount of evidence, but being careful to evaluate its quality, such as whether it might be based on appeals to emotion, logical fallacies, or bad statistics. Did my online activities mean I would research the case on the Internet? It means I would want to do that, as it's my normal habit when trying to figure something out, but I understand perfectly that it would be against the rules in this particular instance. Would I think more favorably of a witness who works in the same retail chain as my wife used to? I presume, having a very favorable impression of that group, that I would be a bit biased in their favor, because research clearly shows that everyone is biased in such ways, even when they claim otherwise or are unaware of it. It's important to acknowledge such biases and compensate for them as needed rather than offhandedly deny them. Do the topics of discussion on the skeptics' forum include court cases? Yes!

Amazingly, despite my eloquent case for my superlative qualifications as the most rational and impartial of jurors, and complete willingness to serve, I was dismissed from the panel. That decision takes place behind closed doors, so I don't know which party dismissed me on what basis. I have my suspicions, naturally.

Some cynics might read into the above that I actually didn't want to be on a jury at that time, which I acknowledge would have been a substantial but manageable inconvenience. But given that all my answers were completely truthful, without exaggeration or omission, what I wanted could hardly have figured into it.

Does anyone else have experiences where self representing as a skeptic, or behaving in a skeptical manner, has been an issue in jury service or other court proceedings?
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No direct experience, but I've been watching a lot of court proceedings lately. I've gotten the distinct impression that the presentation of evidence is as boring as it is straightforward. The quality of the evidence is readily apparent, and pretty much never requires an especially "skeptical" approach.

The standard is not a robotic "a sound and complete logical proof", but rather the much more human and prosocial "beyond reasonable doubt".

Most of the cases I see, when the court is skeptical of testimony, it's because of their long human experience with such cases and defendants. Not because the defense has snuck in a logical fallacy or two.
 
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