This is Why Trials Take Forever · 10:16pm Oct 12th, 2023
Not pony, but it references pony, so it's good enough for me.
Whelp, Jury Duty didn’t amount to much. We had 83 people in the pool and the attorneys couldn’t pick twelve jurors among them, so… yeah.
Although to be honest, I kind of wanted to be picked by the end. The whole thing was treated as an open air forum where the attorneys asked questions of the group. Some of the opinions given bothered me, and some of those opinions were shared by the majority of the jury pool. To be fair, many of their opinions came from places that are entirely understandable. This was a criminal case, and not a simple topic like theft or carjacking. And some people have… experiences. I don’t blame them one bit for being biased as a result. But then there were other biases that left me thinking “If you’re trying to be a proper ‘Murican, you’re failing badly right now.”
When it was all said and done I was at the point of wanting to be on the jury, because I didn’t feel like I could trust most of these people to do the job fairly. I don’t blame the attorneys – prosecution or defense – from saying “no” to the lot. On the other hand, there were a lot of “hard positions” demanded by both sides that I felt were a little unreasonable. A lot of “yes or no” questions, a lot of “Choice A or Choice B” questions. Very binary. Which is a problem when the questions being asked don’t have binary answers (although many in the pool gave binary answers, disturbingly). Worse, the very nature of some of the questions were such that I imagine giving either answer would result in an immediate dismissal from either the defense or prosecution, so how do you answer the question at all and stay in the pool?
But I digress. On to another topic: writing. I’m almost done with my Lovecraft-inspired tale. It was well-received by my pre-reader, which is a great relief as I was honestly unsure how it would be taken. I also got a lot of good feedback which is leading me to make some changes, although none of them are too substantial. The only question now is when to release it. I’d rather not do so on Halloween because, let’s face it, that day’s gonna be getting a lot of releases and I don’t want mine to get drowned out.
Right now I’m thinking sometime late next week. That’ll give me time to implement my changes, sleep on it, and take one more look for potential issues.
In a semi-related aside, my company has just eliminated the one thing they had that made me okay with occasionally coming into the office for work: they’ve banned GDocs from the work network. I don’t blame them for this at all. You’d think a major company with stiff competition and a genuine fear of information theft would have had GDocs banned from the start. Buuut I like to use my break periods to read and write reviews, and GDocs is where my schedule is kept. It’s also where I do most of my writing nowadays, for reviews or otherwise. Those things are now out the window when I’m in the office.
But they’re not blocked on a machine-to-machine basis. When I’m working from home, I can disconnect from the company VPN at any time, and while disconnected I can still use GDocs. So with my primary – okay, only – break time activity taken away while I’m at the office, and me able to do 99% of all my work at home, why would I ever bother to go to the office?
Thank God I’ve got a laid back supervisor who doesn’t care where I work so long as I do my work.
That’s all I’ve got for today. Well, no, I have more, but let’s not make this go on for longer than it has to. Stay tuned next week for Discord being a proper villain, deadly alternate dimensions, and— And… What was I talking about?
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Wonder if that's another difference between the jury systems, that the attorneys are basically auditioning the potential jurors, and can even judge to not have enough suitable to use for this case. Never heard of that here, though I confess to not knowing much about my own local legal system. I do find it admirable enough that you wanted to be on there for the sake of the trial by the end.
Between the pile-up I saw firsthand with a contest fic of mine two years ago (that you've reviewed, actually
), and observing just from the site statistics, it does seem to be a huge hit day, even if there isn't a contest submission deadline closing there and then. Spooky holidays do trigger the creative juices in folks, aye, but said fics gotta be timely.
Also, heh, your work's GDocs ban remind me of how we've switched from GDrive to OneDrive/Sharepoint this year for partner-mandated security reasons. That's not why I don't go into work myself – that'd be the commute and having to bring my computer with me. As a hefty chunk of our hires since COVID have been remote, they're not enforcing anything one way or the other, so it's all good for me too.
See my previous comment: Halloween is a state of mind. It's always time for Lovecraft, looking forward to it. Heck, the Admiral and I are gearing up for a game of CoC right now.
I had jury duty in the middle of writing the late chapters of The Silver Standard, and came prepared for a long day of writing rough draft and not much else, because jury duty is mostly waiting in a room, right? Not me. Apparently I came dressed and behaved as The Best Juror In The World because not only was I in the first pool or jurors to audition for the case, I was the first one picked. It was for a bank robbery (not as exciting as it sounds) and the case lasted about four days, not counting the weekend. Maybe the most empathetic four days I ever had, because wow seeing that parade of humans being so human is something I'll never forget. The prosecutor on his very first case whose hands shook in opening statements, the public defender who literally had to run to the court house and arrived three hours late with a shirt totally soaked by sweat, the bank teller with ptsd who broke down on the stand, the judge who clearly had a long day, and the bank robber whose guilt wasn't in question so much as the way he'd done it (ie: if it was robbery or aggravated robbery). He must have known the chances of Not Guilty were thin, but I still saw that hope in his eyes we'd choose different, and I had to look away before the foreman finished reading the verdict. I helped send someone to jail, and six years later, i still feel weird about it.
Also, if you ever get put on an actual jury, bring a pillow. Those seats become very uncomfortable after five hours. Or maybe a your courthouse uses something besides 10 year old wooden seats that are hell on your spine, idk.
Got my jury selection notice twice. Once was nothing, settled way before trial. Second one had about five "Come in on Tuesday for jury selection but we will call if it gets delayed. Oh, it's been delayed a week." Last call was "Ok, we called you five times so you're good. See you next time." That was easy. Thankfully I live in a county with a very low crime rate and I'm related to a whole bunch of the populace. Wonder if I'll ever get called in on one of them. "Can I be excused, please? The defendant is my cousin. So is the lady he supposedly assaulted. And the sheriff."
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So.....basically the Apple Family?
I was summoned to Jury duty once. I was the first juror to replace someone on the bench. The trial was a criminal one with a guy given 12 counts of the worst kind of accusation I could think of. One juror claimed he couldn't be on the jury because he could not be a juror because he could not think of a punishment to fit the crimes. Myself and the judge were having trouble articulating that jurors are not in charge of sentencing. We were at the very end of the jury selection process and the defense attorney selected me to be removed from the jury and I had to stop myself from running out of there.
Interesting experience. I never got called for jury duty (probably due to my age) but now that I don't live in the states I don't think I can be. Don't think I'm missing out on anything though.
Related to the video, pony was actually what introduced me to Ace Attorney. The Turnabout Storm series was linked to me back in the skype days and I ended up watching the entire eight hour series. It's still up on youtube these days.
I feel that need to push a horror story before halloween, but after getting a bit into mine I've lost all motivation to finish it because it just got too real and too sad all at once. I don't know if that means I definitely should finish it, or it means I've got some introspection to do. Probably both.
I'm interested to hear about your discord take because as much as I like him, I definitely take the 'monster humanized by kindness' approach in the stories I use him in.
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The jury selection process was set in the same room that the trial would have been in, so I got a good look at the seats. They were cushioned, but also lacked armrests. Not sure how that would have gone down.
I can't say for certain how I'd feel about sending someone to jail as I have not actually done so. However, I do not believe doing so would affect me in any way.
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I don't know where you're from, but over here that's not always the case. The judge could decide sentencing, but it's also possible that the judge could ask the jury to choose a sentence within a range of potential sentences. I got the distinct impression that would have happened with this case, since one of the questions – asked repeatedly and heavily emphasized – was about how we might decide the sentencing of the defendant if found guilty. Considering that most people in the room seemed to think the minimum sentence was off the table due to the perceived seriousness of the crime, I imagine it played a big role in eliminating many from selection.
Honestly, I don't understand this. I've had several people tell me in the past "just say this and you won't get selected" and whatnot, but why would I do that? I will be nothing but honest, and if I'm selected then that's fine by me.
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I must admit, I have zero experience with the series. I know my sister played it some and really enjoyed it, and I watched over her shoulder as she played on occasion, but that's the limit of my direct interaction with Ace Attorney.
Gotta admit, I've never had this happen to me. Not with any story I've ever written. Heck, the more "real" and "sad" a story gets, the more invested I become in finishing it. Maybe that says something about me as well.
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So I am in Michigan and I haven't heard of a jury doing that here.
As for my desire to leave, there were very uncomfortable and disturbing things involved in this case that I was not comfortable dealing with. The pretrial questionaire was about drunk driving. That was NOT what this case entailed.
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I do not believe there is a circumstance or crime to be offered to me that would make me want to not be part of a trial.
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18 counts of assault against a minor. 3 different children were alleged victims. I am a very empathetic person and the idea of children being abused was honestly too much for me.
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Mine was child abuse too. Doesn't get a rise out of me. I can know, intellectually, that something is bad without getting all broken up over it. I'm perfectly willing to sit in a courtroom and listen to the facts regarding whether or not someone abused children and make a call based on the evidence presented.
I suppose that means I'm not very empathetic.
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Or I have too much empathy for people. Everyone has different levels of tolerance for these sorts of things. Definitely wasn't trying to imply anything about you. I just haven't really wanted to discuss my experience with people in my personal sphere about it. So I am just using this post to anonymously vent it out.
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Nothing wrong with that, I suppose.
I'm very curious now about the details--like, what were the experiences, how did people fail to be a proper 'Murican, & what were the bad binary questions. Personal experiences, failings of reason, and failings of action are the things I write stories to investigate.
I've never been summoned to jury duty. I sat in on one trial when I was in high school, as part of a civics source. It was a rape trial. The agreed-on facts were:
The boy was convicted. I was stunned, and my faith in the American legal system was destroyed forever. I only wish I'd had the courage to stand up in the courtroom and shout that this was unjust. But I didn't. I was still awed by authority, and had never seen so much of it in one place before.
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Nobody would specify their experiences beyond the fact that they had them, and the attorneys were respectful enough not to ask. It was a child molestation case, so that should say enough.
Attorney: "If the defendant was an illegal immigrant, would that bias you against them?"
Multiple Jurors: "Well if he's not an American Citizen then he doesn't deserve the same rights an American citizen has."
Me: "You do realize that a fair trial is considered a universal right in this country, yes? As in, it's one of the things the United States was founded upon?"
I don't remember all of these, but the one that most stood out in my mind was the question of the role of the American Justice System. Our answers were limited to: punishment or rehabilitation, each as absolutes. There were others, but I'm already drawing a blank on them.
Seeing that example you've shown me? Honestly, I think if the jury had been chosen from the pool I was in the defendant would have been found guilty regardless of evidence. Or, at the very least, we would have gotten a hung jury. I should note that the attorneys both asked about whether or not witness testimony alone would be enough to find someone guilty, which suggested that the prosecution didn't have any physical evidence.