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Both times I served on a jury were positive experiences. My fellow jurors seemed reasonably intelligent and considerate of the process.

There were two exceptions: an a-hole who got out by exaggerating his bootlicking devotion to the prosecutors claiming that he was certain they wouldn't waste our time bringing innocent people to trial. The other time was another idiot who wanted us to quickly reach a verdict cuz he knew the guy was guilty and we were all a bunch of idiots for wasting his time going through the evidence.

Both of these guys were self-serving "conservatives" who are probably still telling their friends how lame jury service is while not realizing that whatever faults the jury system has are only being accentuated by their failure to serve appropriately.

Best jury story I heard involved a relative who was called for jury duty in New York City. He was included in the jury pool for a very high-profile case that made headlines for months. If I mentioned it here, most Freepers would probably remember the case.

While he was sitting in the courtroom before jury selection, one guy on the prosecution team recognized him as a college classmate. The guy said to him quietly: "If you get called, tell the judge you know me. You don't want to be on the jury for this circus trial." LOL.

I was brutally honest in the questioning during several voir dire’s but was rejected in every instance by one or the other of the attorneys present because I said I was a subscriber to the National Review magazine, and that was when it was being run by Bill Buckley. That was many many years ago. I haven’t been called for jury duty ever again, after I last responded to a call for jury duty with a written explanation as to my belief that the criminal justice system was inherently corrupted. They haven’t called me since and I’m sure they never will again.

I have had three tours of Circuit Court jury duty-felonies, and sat on a dozen or more trials, everything from murder, to drugs, 1st degree assaults, to civil cases. I have encountered smart juries with people who wanted to do the right thing and I have encountered people who lied who had no intentions of finding anyone guilty and I have encountered jurors who decided that they knew better than the law what needed to be enforced and not enforced.

I have sat under great judges who took care of their jury pools and didn’t let attorneys abuse the jurors and waste their time and I have sat under a judge who was so whipped by the attorneys it was sad and he cared nothing about the people serving on the juries. We had one trial where the lady next to me was about to go into a diabetic coma because the judge started at 9:00am and hadn’t stopped for lunch going on 1:30pm. During a break where we were not allowed to leave the box I got a bailiffs attention and she told him, I have to eat soon or its not going to be pretty, he got her some candy, told the judge and he kept going for another hour, pretty crappy way to treat people.