Jury Duty
 

Well fellow php talkers, I have been drafted. I'm sitting all day today in a jury 'holding room' waiting (potentially) to be picked for a jury or (hopefully) released on my own recognizance. I'm on lunch now, but have to go back and sit another 4 hours. At least I've taken my JS / DOM book to keep me occupied. What a boring waste of time. Wish me luck. ^^

Is it an interesting case?

If you want to cheat your way out of your civic duty, just say this to the court when asked if you can judge fairly:
"No, sir. A friend of mine who knows what he is talking about told me that anyone who gets this far in the process is guilty. It really doesn't matter what evidence is presented for or against the defendant, I am completely and totally convinced that (point at suspect) this person is guilty as charged."

Legally speaking, they will have to send you home. Now technically this would be lying under oath, but they could never prove you as a liar. A criminal justice professor told this to me.

I'll have to keep that phrase in mind for future reference.

No idea; I was in a jury pool of about 100 people sitting in a room all day waiting to be called up. Several people were called at about 11 to go up to one of the courtrooms where they begin the process of jury selection. After our break at 3 they called us all back to the waiting room and released us. I'm done for at least a year, at which point in time I may be summoned to go in again.

My employer doesn't pay for jury duty time, so I'm out an entire days pay. If I had been called upstairs, it's likely one of the first questions they would have asked would have been "can you stay on the trial for X days" or "how long does your employer pay for you to stand on a jury" at which point I would have said I am not paid at all and would have been released by the judge (likely). Alot of federal or state/county employees get full pay when attending jury service. So it isn't even a matter of wanting to get out if civic duty, as you put it, VillageIdiot, it's that I can't possibly do it. I actually find court cases to be interesting.

Yes, I'm sure the attorneys and judges hear those things all the time. I would bet not all of them are lying.

Thankfully I haven't been called up for Jury Duty yet. I'm pretty much built to work so sitting around in a court room for 2 weeks would kill me.

On the plus side, you'll get to learn some Javascript :-)

Alan