Yeah, I served on jury duty in, if I remember correctly, 2003. Only sat on one case, though, and it was a civil matter. Technically, I probably shouldn't have, since I was friends with the plaintiff's son from high school, but I didn't recognize the name until partway through the trial. Wasn't an issue in any case.

I've kind of been wanting to do jury duty again. I wonder if it's possible to voluntarily sign up for it...

I served on a civil trial for 5 days. A guy had his leg smashed between two forklifts. He was standing on a loading dock next to one forklift and another one backed up at full speed into him. He was suing the company that leased one of the forklifts because a co-worked had cut the back up beeper because it echoed loudly in the warehouse. Technically the company that leased the forklift should have kept the machine maintained and fixed the cut back up beeper. The main issue was only one of the three forklifts were leased, and they couldn't prove the one that hit him was the leased one. The only witness who testified that the forklift that hit him was leased was also fired from the company for stealing merchandise. It also took a year for the lawsuit to be filed and the forklift had already been returned and repainted, so there was even no way to identify it (no one wrote down any serial numbers immediately after the accident).

I felt really bad for the guy, but his lawyers couldn't prove the case.

My wife recently served, and it made me all the more afraid of juries.

It was a civil trial, with a woman claiming some sort of neck injury due to a car accident. According to my wife, both lawyers seemed rather incompetent, but it seemed quite obvious to her that was an attempt at fraud. However, the rest of the jury wanted to award the woman an obscene amount of money, and not wanting to leave sooner rather than later my wife gave in. Afterwards, the woman who's neck was supposedly so injured that she couldn't move her head had suddenly regained full movement and was practically dancing out of the courtroom. I'm not sure how she found this out, but apparently the defendant changed careers to become a fraud investigator for Geico because of the whole event.

I was called in once, to end up sitting in a room for a few hours with a bunch of people, finally to be told that the two sides had settled.

Though, this thread reminds me that I got a questionairre awhile ago that I threw in a pile of papers and forgot about ... that one that states you need to return it quickly or face the grave danger. Oops.

I served but circumstances allowed me to go if, when I called the phone line, they called my number specifically, and not in a sequence (1, 2, 3), I had to serve. I have been called 5 times, and served 3 times. Never spent a day in court.

I was on a murder trial 4 years ago, I hope to never have to be a part of something like that again.

I had jury duty once and really enjoyed it if that's a proper use of the word. It's not like it was "fun" per se, but I liked being part of the process. Mine was a criminal trial and I had what had to be one of the Top 10 stupidest criminals ever. It was a grand theft auto case, but this moron didn't exactly steal a Honda or a Ford. Not good enough for him. My guy stole a Winnebego! Not exactly a vehicle that blends in with traffic. You'd have thought such a moron would have made a plea bargain, but he wanted his day in court. He claimed to have bought the thing for $2000 (even though it was worth over $100k), and couldn't produce a single bit of evidence that he actually did buy the thing. Of course the owner denied ever selling it and this guy was a pillar in the community, very believable. One question I never got answered was whether we (as jurors) could infer anything from evidence NOT submitted, or if we were limited to only that evidence presented in the courtroom. I was curious why the defense didn't at least present a statement from a bank showing a $2k withdrawal of some sort, but they didn't.

Anyway, it was an experience for sure (lasted 2 days) and took us all of 30 minutes to convict. And I did get to be the jury foreman!

Yeah, I'm not sure if worker's comp exempted the company he worked for if that was a separate case. They never brought it up.

I got selected a couple of years ago, the last juror chosen for the case, lucky me!

It was a pretty serious criminal case, drugs, resisting arrest and attempted murder (the 18 year old kid was accused of threating or shooting at a cop). About an hour before I left for the court house on the first day of trial I got a call from the bailiff -- the kid took a plea. I was relieved. I wasn't feeling too good about the very real possibly of putting a 18 year old kid in prison for a long time.

Got called up back in college, but they sent it to an old address. By the time the letter made it to me, it was too late.

Shucks!

My wife got called once, but the trial would have taken place while she was in boot camp.

If I remember right, she still had to fight them a bit to let her off.

I got called, went down to the courthouse and was dismissed 15 minutes later when they discovered the case they thought was a go, wasn't. Luckily my company pays for jury duty days, so ultimately it was an unexpected day off.

No. Don't feel bad. We're helping them.

I was recently summoned but got out of it since I'm active duty military. I was just reading about the trial of that Beale asshole, though, and it seems like I might be missing out on something. Are you allowed to comment on it now? If so, I'm just wondering what you personally thought. I lean right and am philosophically predisposed towards tax rebellion, but then again, I pay my taxes and I'm no millionaire, so yeah, stick it to the man.

Anyway, care to comment on your experience?