What Really Happens On Juries

http://www.brandculturetalk.com/2008/05/15/death-taxes-and-jury-duty/#more-10

Whether you are Brad Pitt making $90,000.00 an hour, a securities lawyer making $900 an hour, a fry chef making $9 an hour or somewhere in between, one thing is clear: we all place a higher value on our time than the court does. And the reason is that the court compels, rather than enlists participation. As the judge in my case put it, “there are two things you have to do in America: pay taxes and jury duty.”

In England, jury selection customarily consists of a single question: “Can you give a fair hearing to both the crown and the defence?” While an admittedly broad brush, you can’t beat it for arriving at the crux of the issue. But in the United States, this question is just the beginning. In fact. the judge in my case told us that if he felt potential jurors were giving evasive answers in an attempt to avoid jury service, he would excuse them from the panel and order them to observe the whole trial from the gallery. Whether he actually had the power to do this is beside the point; it reflects an attitude that the citizenry exists to serve the court, rather than the other way around.

This hubris undermines confidence in both the efficacy and the wisdom of the jury system. Where attendance is compulsory, little incentive exists to make it better. But the right to a trial by jury is too important to have it undermined by a court culture oblivious to its enormous collective societal impact. If the trial courts were run as a business, I bet they would run jury selection more like the UK model. Here’s a modest proposal. Instead of having the jurors wait for the litigants, have the litigants wait for the jurors! Imagine a court that began at the scheduled time. Imagine a system where instead of being confined and sluiced about like livestock, jurors were actually treated as if they were important.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, May 29th, 2008 at 3:06 pm and is filed under Blog Posts, Common Law, Court Dynamics, Juror Narratives, Jury Duty, Jury Selection, Local Issues, Opinion, Reform, Trends. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.