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Dolfan in NYC

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51 minutes ago, Curt McGirt said:

This is a general question: What is the best method of getting out of jury duty you have ever heard of? 

 Present proof that you’re over 65?  Carry a gun to the courtroom on your first day?  I mean, there aren’t a lot of valid reasons not to serve when your name comes up.  You can get out of jury duty if you’re deemed essential to your employer’s day-to-day operations, but that’s dicey.  My brother is an executive at his firm (CFO and VP) and they turned down his request to be let of out jury duty.

On another topic, my involvement with the state Democratic Party came to an end this week.  Never run for office myself, but I’ve been involved in local politics for almost 30 years.  My wife was told we’re too moderate for the party and it’s hurting “the agenda”.  Apparently, the person who said this to her thought we’d take it as a wake up call and get on board with various local issues.  The woman was rather surprised when she found out we’d decided to change party affiliation instead.

i imagine we’ll still vote Democrat a fair bit of of the time, but right now neither party represents my views very well.  Probably done with politics for the foreseeable future.

 

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I'd say the simplest one is to mention jury nullification, and the lawyers will toss you.  I go with the old raised hand when they ask the question, "Has your life been touched by crime?"  I mean, at the point where you're old enough to be on a jury, whose life hasn't been?

Edited by Contentious C
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Why would you want to get out of Jury Duty? It's way more fun than working. And, y'know, Civic Duty and that. What would Captain America do?

Edited by AxB
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3 hours ago, Contentious C said:

  I mean, at the point where you're old enough to be on a jury, whose life hasn't been?

Me.  Also, my siblings & their families, my parents, my grandparents, most of my co-workers (so far as I know), most of my friends, etc.  

My interactions with the police have been limited to a couple traffic citations and getting lectured by a cop once in college after a drunken roommate ran nude around the neighborhood on a Sunday morning.  

I've been called for jury duty a couple times.  It was annoying due to work, but I apparently buy into the "civic duty" pr.  I don't really think I - or most other people - have a good reason to get out of jury duty.  

Edited by Eoae
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Doing Jury Duty is a great place to get "When I was on Jury Duty..." stories. Nobody has any interesting "When I wasn't on Jury Duty..." stories. But if you absolutely have to get out of it, the best way is to be a Judge or a Lawyer or a Cop or something. Or possibly a convicted Felon. Maybe get ACAB tattooed on your forehead.

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On 2/20/2021 at 3:27 PM, Setsuna said:

@John from Cincinnati nailed it. I'm trying to be a bit vague because I know web use is being monitored. The worst part is knowing that the hammer is going to drop one of these days but you just never know when. Too many young people are going to die or be sentenced to long prison sentences for nothing more than wanting a better future. While I am not personally involved in any of what's going on, I know a lot of people who are and I worry about them everyday. 

 

Edit : And three hours later shooting in another city. No idea the current death toll but videos are not looking good. 

Thought I would give a quick update. 

The hammer's certainly dropped, and been dropping for sometime now. Pretty much right after my last post, they started to break up the protestors with flashbang grenades and teargas. My area, and specifically right outside of my apartment, had large groups so it was a pretty constant stream of explosions from 9 am until about 1 pm or 2 pm for two weeks. My apartment basically got tear-gassed one day when a canister landed on the roof of the building next door and the wind blew the smoke directly into our place. Also, I teach second grade during those hours through Zoom so had to do my best to be composed and still run structured lessons against that backdrop, meanwhile I'm just doing my best to not crumble. 

It has become much worse since then. The real crackdown began and confirmed deaths are in the high 500s but people assume it is much higher. No one close to me has been directly affected yet, though a couple acquaintances have been arrested and in prison for the past month or so. I can't imagine how their friends and families feel. Social media is the only way to get updated information on hat's happening, but every time you open it you also know that you are going to see a lot of dead bodies...

I'd bounce out of here and go hang out in Thailand for 9 months under their new tourist visa, but that would mean leaving my wife without knowing when I would ever be able to get back. I can't ask her to leave her mom and sister, who don't have passports at the moment, and all government offices are closed here because workers are all on strike so no chance of bringing them along. So just kind of in limbo. I can count on one hand the number of times I've stepped outside in the past six weeks. 

The really (and terribly ) selfish part of me wants the people to give up. The UN and ASEAN cannot/won't do anything, and an unarmed population against a well-stocked army don't have a lot of hope in a direct confrontation. But of course I completely understand how people feel and the reason that they see this as a now or never moment as far as the direction of the country. 

Going to play it by ear for the next while. If I feel really unsafe, I'll try and get out. Sucks, because I love this country and have spent nearly half of my life here by this point. 

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18 hours ago, Curt McGirt said:

This is a general question: What is the best method of getting out of jury duty you have ever heard of? 

Saying you're a lawyer or have legal training.  

Instant dismissal. 

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44 minutes ago, Dolfan in NYC said:

Saying you're a lawyer or have legal training.  

Instant dismissal. 

Would they be likely to check up on such statement? Or is just easier to move on to the next person in line? People doing the selection must be going "Goddammit, this country is absolutely littered with lawyers and would be-lawyers!"

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One of my best friends actually has an ACAB tattoo haha. Being woken up in jail by being booted in the head by an officer will send you in that direction. 

I wonder if I could just give them my reading list because Kropotkin, Bakunin, and Emma Goldman are all on it right now. Seriously, if I claimed to be an anarchist, would that work? Kind of a conscientious objector defense? 

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20 hours ago, Curt McGirt said:

This is a general question: What is the best method of getting out of jury duty you have ever heard of? 

Sending a letter to the courthouse explaining that you are an anarchist who does not believe in the laws of man worked well for.....someone (until they moved to another area anyway). 

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3 hours ago, Shartnado said:

Would they be likely to check up on such statement? Or is just easier to move on to the next person in line? People doing the selection must be going "Goddammit, this country is absolutely littered with lawyers and would be-lawyers!"

It literally doesn't matter. 

1) If you do have legal training and/or are a lawyer, you're a bad juror because you know trial lawyers tricks and can potentially sway a jury.

2) If you don't have legal training, you're probably a crazy person who is a bad juror because you're crazy. 

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If you don't serve on a jury you'll never get a chance to nullify one, so so your civic duty.

Somehow at almost 40 I've never been called for jury duty and I'd actually like to be on one, even though I'm pretty sure I'd get cut.

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This just reminded me of the Stooges getting out of Vietnam duty. Iggy Pop went into the head and worked up a giant erection, took off all his clothes, and freaked out telling the MP or whoever he was gay, so they kicked him out. Scotty Asheton stayed up for three days straight getting fucked up, drew a dual-color lightning bolt on his forehead, and walked up to the office, dropping an empty beer can on the front step. They immediately threw him in the brig ?

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23 hours ago, Curt McGirt said:

This is a general question: What is the best method of getting out of jury duty you have ever heard of? 

The best method is to ask for a postponement of your dates.  You'll get asked to pick another time - pick a holiday week.

That said, you shouldn't try to get out of it, for a variety of reasons.  The number one reason is that, should you ever be wrongly accused of a crime, you should want someone like yourself to be on the jury.  And you owe that to your fellow citizens.  Jury duty can also be a good experience.  I have served once, on an extremely mundane hearing, but it was a good experience nonetheless.  I was selected to be the foreman and ended up explaining our decision to the losing attorney.  I previously didn't make it past voir dire on a case that seemed very interesting - a case where a guy was charged with assaulting an officer but apparently didn't know the guy was a cop.

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10 hours ago, Shartnado said:

Would they be likely to check up on such statement? Or is just easier to move on to the next person in line? People doing the selection must be going "Goddammit, this country is absolutely littered with lawyers and would be-lawyers!"

Yes.  You could possibly get excused from a case by making a false claim (for example, saying during jury selection that you know the defendant or are biased against the defendant).  But, to be excused from jury duty entirely, you have submit paperwork which will be verified and ruled on.   

 

7 hours ago, Zimbra said:

If you don't serve on a jury you'll never get a chance to nullify one, so so your civic duty.

Somehow at almost 40 I've never been called for jury duty and I'd actually like to be on one, even though I'm pretty sure I'd get cut.

You don't get cut from jury duty.  You get cut from individual juries.  Basically, when you get called for jury duty, you're on call for a certain length of time (it varies from state to state; period is typically 30-60 days).  While you're on jury duty, you have to call in each night and check if you have to report to the court house.  If you're asked to report, you sit through the jury selection process, where you might be selected to serve on the jury for that trial, selected as an alternate, or disqualified/released from service.  You can be released from the jury pool for cause (having a grudge against the defendant) or because one of the attorneys want to disqualify you (basically, they suspect a different juror will be more favorable to their cases or some such).  If you get "cut", you go back home but you;re still on jury duty, so you have to call in that night and may have to report to the courthouse for a different trial.

I've had jury duty a few times and actually served on a couple juries for short trials.  Nothing interesting.  i don't even remember anything about the cases or the defendants. 

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Only jury I have been selected for was once for traffic court. It annoyed me since it felt like the other jurors were kind of idiots.

Otherwise I've made it to the selection process for two cases. One was a traffic accident involving drunk driving a few years ago. Had to be excused from that since a friend of the family had recently lost a niece to a drunk driving incident. I was not going to be impartial on that one. The other was some sort of underage, family rape case that I basically lucked out of because I came pretty damn close to be selected. I really did not want to do that one but also couldn't come up with a good excuse to get out of it. It was one of the first times (possibly the first) I did jury duty.

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10 minutes ago, Eivion said:

Only jury I have been selected for was once for traffic court. It annoyed me since it felt like the other jurors were kind of idiots.

Otherwise I've made it to the selection process for two cases. One was a traffic accident involving drunk driving a few years ago. Had to be excused from that since a friend of the family had recently lost a niece to a drunk driving incident. I was not going to be impartial on that one. The other was some sort of underage, family rape case that I basically lucked out of because I came pretty damn close to be selected. I really did not want to do that one but also couldn't come up with a good excuse to get out of it. It was one of the first times (possibly the first) I did jury duty.

My dad served on a jury involving some kind of child abuse. He would not give even the slightest of details. It haunted him for the rest of his life. You got lucky. 

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31 minutes ago, The Natural said:

Learnt my Auntie passed away today, she tested positive for coronavirus. Fuck. To my DVDVR MB friends who are also Facebook friends, please keep it to here for now. Thanks.

That is terrible. So sorry to hear that! My aunt actually also passed away little more than a month ago, but that had nothing to do with covid.

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5 minutes ago, Shartnado said:

That is terrible. So sorry to hear that! My aunt actually also passed away little more than a month ago, but that had nothing to do with covid.

Thank you, @Shartnado. I'm very sorry to hear about your Aunt, friend.

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I got called for jury duty late last year but put up a fuss about covid so they put it off until this July. I'm not super psyched about it but I'm not going to try to get out of it, because god forbid I'm ever on the other side of things and hope to have a decent human being help decide my fate. 

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