• ChunkMcHorkle@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    God, I can’t even. I’m not an attorney but I’ve been a juror several times and had a couple cases of my own, so I’ve seen a good bit for a layperson.

    Unfortunately, I think the most it would do is get them a lecture from the judge. A huffing and a puffing about civic responsibility, and everyone deserving a fair trial, and the tree of freedom needing a volunteer watering can from time to time, and how horribly selfish it is for an individual in a free society to put his or her own safety first instead of selflessly serving the Glorious Cause of Justice (the same Glorious Cause that also happens to be making a really good living for the judge and lawyers in that same room).

    Judges get REALLY huffy when their ability or integrity are questioned or even seem to be, and they are already armed for whatever excuses jurors want to give for not wanting to serve, so IMO it’s a tossup as to how that would fly. It all really depends on the judge.

    But worst case scenario, they’re not jurors yet, so that particular roomful of jurors is simply dismissed in its entirety because it was said in front of other jurors (voir dire – jury selection – is usually done group style), an entirely new group is led in by the bailiff, and voir dire begins anew.

    with no significant repercussions

    Yeah, that’s even worse, lol. Alleging that expectation of future favoritism toward the defendant is outright accusing the judge of either corruption or incompetence. There are plenty of judges that are absolutely both, but it’s best left unsaid by the average juror. This is why they often ask if jurors are lawyers or in law enforcement up front, before they get into the real questioning, so that they can be excused: usually neither side wants jurors who actually know how the sausage is made.

    But I’ve seen a judge verbally rip some poor juror’s head off for next to nothing, so a juror telling a judge they expect the judge’s future inaction toward the defendant is a bold move. This is why I personally favor the silent but effective repellent method. NOBODY paid to be in a courtroom ever wants a revolutionary juror, lol.

    And if someone really wants to poison a jury, they should simply start speechifyin’ about jury nullification, lol. Don’t do this. It’s the nuclear option. People have been criminally charged just for handing out fliers in front of courthouses that tell prospective jurors what it is. If there is any single thing that gets up a judge’s ass like a wayward roman candle on a lit fuse, it’s those two words. I don’t know what the full repercussions would be in any given district, but for a start they would absolutely NOT be serving on that jury, and walking out any prospective juror that heard it might only be the beginning of the fallout.