Judicial press gang.
And the absent jury members were not picked up...why ???
70 jury members needed and not one on the original list were arrested ???
Mr Weld might look at his own house, the justice system in this country has developed a rather large stench.
Used to happen far more frequently, because if somebody demanded a trial the court didn't necessarily have a panel handy.
Now most courts summon jurors for trial week, with extras depending on how many cases they expect to try (kind of like the airlines overbooking.) So there's a lot of sitting around for most of the prospective jurors (and way too much excitement for some).
So now this only happens if too many veniremen just ignore the jury summons.
Sounds like this county needs to prosecute a few of the veniremen who blew off the summons . . . just to "encourage the others."
If I get pulled in off the street without warning, what are the chances I will render a guilty verdict? Less than zero. I’d let cross-dressing pedophile slashers walk.
-this is INSANE.
I’ve been summoned somewhere around 10 times in 25 years.
Only once was I empaneled - for a murder trial. The trial lasted 4 days.
On most other occasions we were released around lunch time.
After conscripting these people, I’d be willing to bet that 90% of the cases were postponed anyway. That’s how the system works.
Years ago, this is how juries were picked.
Often, you would see men standing around outside, with straw in their shoes.
This was a signal to defense attorneys that the juror was available for hire, and gave birth to the term “Straw Men”.
Sometimes, a society must DEMAND services from its citizens.
ping
The other 161 need to serve some jail time, that will solve THAT problem.
I was thinking about it and if a court administrator stopped me on the street and said “excuse me we sent out jury summons and nobody showed up, so now we are asking people to serve on an emergency basis” I would probably say “absolutely”
On the other hand if I was conscripted in the fashion this article portrays I’d probably tell the admin to take a hike.
So we’re picking juries the same way we pick talk show audience members?
How long before jurors get to ask the defendent why he think he all that?
Greely is not too far, either geographically or philosophically, from Boulder. Boulder Liberals are so whacked out that their behavior has earned the term “Boulder Dementia Syndrome”.
Inbred idiocy has long been a part of the ‘Front Range Fringe’ populations. Greely was named for Horace Greely, a newsie of the day who was enthralled by a French socialist who believed that “ . . when Man reached the proper level of socialist awareness, the wild beasts will willingly serve him and the seas will turn to lemonade . .”.
To some very limited extent, that has come to pass: wild beasts (cougar) are serving ‘Front Range Fringe’ people for dinner. One could argue this is not quite what Greely and his Guru meant. In any case, tell it to the cougars.
It may interest the FR community that the Frenchman Greely followed was confined to a home for the perpetually bewildered for much of his life. He was, so to speak, a member of the Rubber Room set.
If ‘Front Range Fringe’ members aren’t willing to shoulder their duties as jurymen, one can’t help wondering why Judgie Pooh didn’t have some ossifer of Da Law pick them up, rather than hapless passersby.
Bah, Humbug!
Sorry, my bad - make that Bah Humbuggery!
We are talking about Liberals, after all.
They may have second thoughts about grabbing jurors off the street, next time.
This sucks, people shouldn’t just be pulled off the streets like this. They should have at least been given as much time as those people who didn’t show up to get all their work and family commitments straightened out.
They can summon you, but they can’t prohibit you from vowing during voir dire to be completely capricious and biased at trial.
“Do you know the plaintiff or defendant, or have any association with them?”
“No, but the defendant looks guilty as hell. It’s going to be fun convicting him. Is the jury box an iPod no-go zone?”
My immediate reaction to being whisked off the street to do jury duty would be this: “Guilty.”
No need to hear evidence for me.
You wonder why a judge would consider such a jury to be unbiased.
I have gotten a jury duty summons in the mail twice. Both times I was excused from it, once for school finals and once for work obligations I couldn’t get out of.
Duty aside, a lot of people just CANNOT do jury duty - take off work an unspecified length of time and lose all that income, or scramble to find a babysitter for an unspecified length of time...
Which leaves people on juries who are either:
retired (OK)
unemployed (depends WHY but not always a good choice for a fair conviction)
crazy
insanely interested in the court system (again, could be good or bad)
has a job that’s rather “unimportant” and therefore, just by statistics, is likely to be less educated
Typical liberals:"punish the innocent and let the guilty go free"
or we have to power to punish the innocent.