Serving on Jury Duty

ha! more like:

 

That is NOT my idea of "protect", woman!

 

consider me a drink marsupial- i will protect them in my belly! GET- In MY-BELLY!

 

So, I did not get selected. I think I asked too many questions during the voir dire. Since the defendant was not there, we were asked whether that might affect our ability to be fair. I asked how much we were able/supposed to take body language into account and, if we were allowed to, then without seeing the defendant, it might be difficult to be fair since I'd only see the plaintiff. There were 1 or 2 other questions that I asked that I can't share since they are too close to the case. So, I think they thought "boy, is this person high maintenance or what?"

I was able to bring in my blackberry and did not try to bring in my laptop. No one else had a laptop.

 

i'm just curious...you would, on a jury, decide whether someone was lying or not based on their body language and not on hard evidence?

 

I would not base it solely on body language but, yes, I would take that into account. Study after study has shown that the words convey only a portion of the meaning. Look at kids. One can tell whether or not they are telling the truth much more by seeing how they act or react to a question that to the words that come out of their mouths. Adults are more disciplined but body language still transmits a lot of data.

 

i would definitely agree with that statement. but i thought you are not supposed to take that into account...i haven't been able to serve on jury duty yet...i have only been called to do when i have had nursing babies.

 

I've never heard a judge say, "disregard the body language of the defendant". It's a big part of the information to be "judged". I imagine it's also part of the justification in the 6th Amendment providing for the accused the right to confront and cross examine witnesses against him/her.

 

I have served, but it was a civil dispute between a contractor and homeowner that got so blown out of proportion we sent them both home unhappy. Based on the "evidence" we saw it was almost impossible to find the party who was actually more at fault.

I'm no attorney, but I believe the nuance here is that you have to restrict your judgement to the evidence and your interpretation of it. If evidence includes testimony in court (or a video) and your interpretation is influenced by the non-verbal communication that is part of the delivery I think you can allow that. I think the instructions are focused on preventing the establishment of any pre-conceived notions about the defendent based on what he/she does just sitting in the courtroom. This includes negative stereotypes and positive ones. One of the participants in my trial was very ill and it was clear in the instructions we were not to take that into account even though it wasn't mentioned explicitly.

 

I'd like to know why this 'person' doesn't have to show up. If they are being charged with something, I would expect them to show and be present!

 

This sounded like the charged individual would be missing more that just 'jury selection'. If it's just jury selection what does that have to do with judging body language at that stage of the game?