I have been holding my breath and praying not to get a jury duty notice. I would rather hang myself than deal with that again!

Good Morning everyone! Double dark brew and strong tea are ready to go with Connie's break room goodies! Hagatha, it sounds like you have everything under control for the move. We can decline jury duty after age 70 here so we no longer need to worry about it! The problem for us was you could be called to serve anywhere in the state...could be a couple hour ride one way...in the winter that meant driving in the dark coming and going in all kinds of weather!

Hope you all enjoy your day...going to be very hot and humid here...heat index over 100!

Gerry

Good morning, Danish, Donuts and Bagels in the Break Room. Manicure and lunch with a friend today. Trivia at CVI tonight. Enjoy the day and hug someone.

Good morning Thursday and everyone. Double dark brew and bagels are much appriciated Gerry and Connie. Have a good day everyone!

Oldbroad, I won't deny that it is EXTREMELY inconvenient for me right now. Add in that the case deals with child sexual abuse and it's indeed a nightmare. But in some ways I do feel a pull towards civic duty. Out of our huge jury pool, there weren't a lot of people left who felt they could be fair and unbiased to both sides. I do find the process very interesting and have a better understanding of some of the laws. But I will be very glad when it's over and I can return to my weeds and tomatoes!

Gerry, here in California you can ask to be permanently excused for jury duty if you are 70 years old and over. I am not there yet but I could not go even if I wanted to, as we have no car and the courthouse is a 90-mile round trip. No other transportation on offer, either. Due to the nature of the hassle of getting out of it, I pretty much feel the same way about it that oldbroad does. However, I think it's admirable, Drac, that you are willing to do it. It's not like you don't have anything else to do!

Just thinking about it is extremely stressful to me. Here, you can get out of it (maybe not always - I don't know) if you are 65 or older for regular jury duty but then there is Federal or US ? jury duty I guess, that I only recently found out about, and that one you need to be 70 or older to get out of. I only just turned 65 so...

And honestly, I don't believe "the system" works very well anymore.

I would have loved to sit on Jury duty, but the pay is abysmal and we would have ended up not being able to pay our bills. An employer can refuse to pay an employee who is on jury duty, and mine did refuse. In the end I got so stressed out about it that my doctor wrote a formal letter to excuse me. If the provincial government made it mandatory for employers to continue to pay their employees through jury duty, there would be a lot less resistance and people like me would happily sit on a jury.

I only live 15 minutes from town which is our County Seat, so, travel etc. is no problem. They really don't "pay" you, but give you a per diem of $18 - LOL! I could have gotten out of it for multiple reasons, but like I said, the civic duty kind of pulled on me. Oldbroad, I pretty much agree with you that the system is pretty sad right now. However, today it worked. After 5 1/2 hours of deliberation on the verdicts and another hour of deliberation on the sentences for each of the three charges, we put this guy away for the maximum allowed by Missouri law which is 29 years. The judge talked to us afterwards and thanked us profusely for serving in such a difficult and horrific case. Then he told us the daughter/victim had been raped by her father since she was a child in another neighboring county and was going to go ahead with charges in that county. I told him I hoped our actions today gave her to courage to move forward with the new charges and he said he was sure it did. He told us since she was under 12 when those offenses happened, if he was convicted there, he would never see the light of day again.

I didn't home till almost 7:00 tonight and think I'll sleep in tomorrow morning! Guenter made supper for the rest of them tonight!

Good Morning Connie, soot, Draclvr, Marian, oldbroad, hagatha, Lex and everyone. Happy Birthday Lex! Strong double dark roast and extra strong tea are ready...cupckes for a Birthday celebration for Lex too!

Have a great Friday everyone!

Gerry

Good morning, Danish, Donuts and Bagels in the Break Room. Karaoke at Hacienda tonight. Enjoy the day and hug someone.

Gerry, that double dark roast - black - is just what I needed this morning!

Happy Friday, Gameboomers!

Draclvr, That sounds like a righteous conviction. Is there any crime worse than the abuse of a child? I will never understand it.

None. No crime worse and especially by her own father. The mother was in the home, but mentally incapacitated at the time. It was a horrendous thing, but I hope the young woman knows she was SEEN and HEARD and BELIEVED.

Thank you for the celebratory cupcakes Gerry!

Interestingly different attitudes towards Jury service, and interestingly different approaches to Jury selection in different jurisdictions. Here in the Isle of Man there are only 7 on a Jury rather than 12 which is more usual elsewhere: I think this probably goes back to a time when the population was very small.

I have a feeling that in USA there are a few extra jurors listening to the case ready to be substituted if any fall ill or otherwise have to drop out, but I do not think that practice is followed elsewhere.

In some jurisdictions you can only be called once for Jury service, but in others there is no such restriction. I know that in UK if you have a good excuse not to attend when called (such as having to care for small children), you are often then excused for life, a frustrating result for some who might have wanted to attend when more convenient.

Then there is the question of majority verdicts sometimes being allowed but unanimous decisions being preferred.

Lawyers are usually excluded from Jury service here, but I had the interesting situation of once being mistakenly summoned for Jury service on a case in which I had already been asked to act as prosecutor...

I also find the different procedures to be interesting from one country to the next. We had two alternate jurors, but they were excused after the first day. Both decisions with my jury had to be unanimous, but different types of cases may only require a majority. Since these were such serious charges, a unanimous verdict was difficult on the third charge. But we finally got there. I think what the process did was force us to give the gravity of the case the kind of deliberation it deserved.

I think the "process" seems to get people to change their minds so they can get out of there and go home. Just my opinion based on my experiences. I am glad that you feel things went well with your case though.

Also, seems to have been decided pretty quickly. The one I worked on took much too long for what it was about.

Thanks Lex ... cupcakes in addition to Gerry and Connies, coffee, tea, donuts and bagels today ... what a treat!!

T.G.I.F. good afternoon all ... the weekend is here!!

Take care and stay safe

We had a family friend who was an alternate juror on the Charles Manson family murder trial, and he was there every day for the entire nine months, sequestered in a hotel for the duration. Not sure about all the ins and outs of alternate jurors.

That would have been fascinating and awful in equal parts.

Indeed it was. In some ways I think it scarred him for the rest of his life, and he certainly didn't want to talk about it much if at all. He was the nicest person you could imagine. One of those people who was probably chosen because he could have replied honestly during jury selection that he did not know much if anything about the case, because Bob tended to steer clear of anything morbid or upsetting, and certainly did not seek such things out on the news or in magazines. The foreman wrote a book about the whole awful business and changed the names of the jurors involved, but I knew which one was Bob.

Weirdly, my current next-door neighbor was a prison guard for Charles Manson, among other high-profile inmates. And weirder still, I was very good friends with another guy years ago whose father was a prison guard for Manson as well. He had a whole bunch of letters from Charlie that he saved over the years. There are other weird connections too, like a friend of mine who knew two of the Manson family members (who were not involved in any murders) after they had left the family for good. He had some interesting stories to tell.

Anyway, enough of that! I hope you all have a very pleasant weekend.

Good Morning Connie, Draclvr, hagatha, Lex, Oldbroad, soot, Marian and everyone else! Welcome to the weekend. More of that delicious tasting double dark brew and strong tea are ready. That was a very interesting discussions on jury duty...and strange coincidences for you Marian with the Manson case. To be summoned for jury duty here it is supposed to be random...but for years hubby and I kept getting summoned every other year for years. There are so many people we know that have never been summoned in their life and yet we were every year! Only time we didn't get a summons was during Covid.

Enjoy your day!

Gerry

Good morning, Danish, Donuts, and Bagels in the Break Room. I've been called for jury duty several times. I only served once as and alternate, and once as a regular juror. Shopping is on today's agenda. Dinner and karaoke at the Eagles tonight.. Enjoy the week end and hug someone.

Good morning all. It's definitely a dark coffee morning as I launch into yet another day of getting ready to move.

Today I finish packing the basement. I have finally found all the nasty surprises down there, including three boxes of old academic books I'll never look at. The Junk Guy and the Restore took away literal mounds of furniture and stuff, leaving me with a completely empty study, where I can now put all the boxes instead of having them stacked all over the house.

This moving business is tough work! The last two times we moved we didn't purge anything and it all came with us. I can tell some of the boxes haven't been looked at since our first move 12 years ago because the bottoms are all full of sow bugs. The new house has very little storage so I really needed to cull, which has taken the better part of 6 months.

Good morning everyone! Gerry, the double dark brew sounds marvelous...keep it coming! Connie, I'll go with danish this morning...have fun while shopping. Hagatha, I still have boxes from our move 23 years ago. .. : - O ... don't tell WOM! The moving business is tough work...glad that ended. Chores and projects on the docket today and then some SG-1 and a good book. Take care all, hug someone and stay safe!