Records: Cate Edwards claimed she wasn’t a U.S. citizen to get out of jury duty

The system is not broken. I've been in and around it for nearly 40 years. I sat in the jury assembly room twice in one county and once in another (never even voir dired) before I finally served on a jury a couple of years ago, and I was impressed with how well the system worked. It was overall a well-educated jury with lots of common sense, and everybody there took the job seriously and did their best to do right. My husband is an honest-looking fellow who has been picked for 8 or 10 juries in his lifetime - and he agrees that the system works.

There are problems, they could be fixed or they could get worse. But your attitude that you don't want to be bothered will kill the system if enough people adopt it.

You simply do NOT want ignorant and uneducated people on welfare doing a half-@$$ed job of deciding cases, just because you think they ought to do something for their money. They'll do a rotten job at that just like they do everything else - and when they decide multi-million dollar business cases by socking it to the 'evil rich', what do you suppose is going to happen to businesses and the economy? Right now those 'runaway jury' cases are pretty rare and only happen in high-profile cases, but once layabouts who can't even hold a job are the jurors, every case will be a runaway. Even if you don't happen to be on the losing end of a frivolous suit (and those will multiply as soon as the unscrupulous realize that ignorant jurors are handing out free money), the sinking economy will sink you too.

The whole purpose of the legal system on the civil side is to avoid self-help repossession, theft, and violence. When people can't get their disputes resolved in a just and honest manner, we'll be back to pistols at dawn and might makes right. I don't want to go there.

The idea that trial day will push folks to settle is another point. The dynamics of settlement are funny, you have to have the hammer before you can get it done. It's not the lawyers, it's the clients. Nobody wants to settle until they have to -- not the defendants who don't want to write the check, and not the plaintiffs who think they can wrangle another couple thousand out of the defendants.

Mediation is one attempt to avoid last-minute settlements, but it hasn't worked out the way everybody hoped because it isn't binding.

You don't have to be in the courtroom to be useful. You are 'cushion' or 'insurance' against folks who don't show up. And sometimes we have to do things that are boring or unpleasant just because it's our civic duty. I always found that taking my own books, a comfortable stadium seat to put in the wooden chair, some music with earphones and a little easy work from my job, kept me fully occupied in the days before laptops and iPads and wireless service in the jury assembly room. Now, of course, I just FReep.

Sorry but you’re just plain wrong. The system is broken, it punishes the people who want to participate in our government by voting by forcing them to waste days in bad rooms not being on juries. The biggest problem is that there’s only about a 10% chance, so if there’s a 6 person jury that means 54 people wasted their day not being picked. THAT is a BROKEN system.

How the hell do they know if the jury members not being picked aren’t intelligent, most of them never get voir dired. Then of course there’s the classic joke, the people on the jury are the ones who couldn’t find a way to get out of jury duty just how smart can they really be. It’s funny because it’s true.

All your “proof” that it’s not broken revolves around the people that actually get to serve, which ignores why it is so obviously broken: most people will NEVER serve no matter how many times they show. Running the averages you’ve got to show up 10 times to get picked once. BROKEN. Actually your “proof” helps show that it’s broken, because if you’re good enough to be a “smart” juror then you should have been picked all ten times, but you weren’t, you never will be. The system fails. They call in too many people too often which results in people mostly doing nothing. I’d love to actually serve on a jury, but I won’t, my half a dozen trips down to never even get in a court room proved that, which is why I won’t go anymore. I’m done wasting MY time for YOUR broken system that doesn’t work. They should NEVER call in more than twice as many people as they need, ever. Instead they call in 10 times as many as they need every single day.

They aren't just calling in jurors for the heck of it (it costs money and I don't know of any court that has money to waste). I understand that you're peeved because you feel your trips were for nothing -- but they were not for nothing. They're necessary because of how juries are selected and the need to provide as impartial a jury as possible.

You're not taking into account the need for multiple "strikes" -- which not every lawyer uses, but some use every blessed one. Any felony and any equity/superior court case, it's a jury of twelve unless the parties agree to fewer. There are extra strikes in felony cases, and still more strikes if it's a capital case. You generally have to have a minimum of 48 prospective jurors to get a jury of 12.

There are also disqualifications for cause: being a sworn law enforcement officer, being an employee or insured with an insurance company, knowing the parties or witnesses, having been a party to a similar case. In high profile cases, you have the additional problem of people having read or heard about the case and forming opinions.

Get enough challenges for cause, you have to pull in another panel or two from the jury room. So you have to provide not only for the anticipated number of 'free strikes', but also for challenges for cause. Obviously, the lawyers the day you were down at court were sensible and didn't use every strike, so you may feel like you weren't needed - but you were.

Otherwise, if there are not enough jurors there (and the crafty criminal defense lawyers come in the jury room and count noses - I saw a few I knew duck in and out a couple of times) they WOULD use every strike, and then when there weren't enough jurors move to dismiss under the Speedy Trial Act. Doesn't matter how good a system you try to set up, somebody is going to figure out how to game it. In cases where they know they'll have a problem, many courts use jury questionnaires by mail to weed out obvious disqualifications. But you can't do that on every case.

I'm sorry you think that you have wasted your day because you weren't picked -- it's necessary to have enough panels to provide for the attorney who uses every strike, and the oddball case where everybody seems to know the parties and have an opinion about it. The idea is not just to get "a" jury -- but to get a FAIR jury. You do agree, don't you, that it would be unfair to have somebody on the jury with an interest in the case, or a strong prejudice against one of the parties? I presume if you were a litigant you wouldn't like a juror or two in the box giving you dirty looks - or knowing that they were employed by your opponent?

Having sat in the jury assembly room for the Monday and Tuesday before I was chosen on Wednesday for a trial that lasted the rest of the week, I can tell you from chatting with other potential jurors and just looking over the group that it was a well-educated, conscientious bunch of people. Maybe Cobb County is just a particularly good county, with public-spirited citizens who DON'T decide that they are going to cut and run because the justice system is "wasting" a day or two of their precious time.

Besides, showing up for all those years really was worth it for the experience of serving. Oddly enough, it is a sacred duty, a little unnerving, a heavy responsibility. I understand a little better how it works now.

My trips WERE for nothing, there’s no “feel” about it. Go down there, spend a day in the waiting room, never see the inside of a court room IS for NOTHING. It has nothing to do with how jurors are selected, it has to do with a court system that’s stupid and wastes everybody’s time.

You’re not taking into account the 90% “rejection” rate (I have to put rejection in quotes because the majority of people that don’t get picked for a jury are like I was, never voir dired, never actually considered, just sat in the room waiting for nothing to happen). That’s what makes the thing a tragic stupid pathetic indefensible waste of time and money. To get 6 jurors 60 people will be called in, and at least 30 of them will never leave the waiting room. That’s a waste.

It’s not 48 to get 12, is ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY to get 12. 48 might actually go through voir dire, the other 80 are because the system is broken and stupid.

You’ve got it backwards, there’s TOO MANY jurors, that’s why over half of them never get to voir dire. They call in too many people too often. Broken system.

There’s no “think” those WERE wasted days. If you went to the doctors office and spent the entire day in the waiting room without ever being seen at all would you consider that a wasted day? Of course you would, and you’d be right. Well that’s what over half of all people that show up for jury duty do, every single day. Wasted.

If the majority were actually at least getting to voir dire you’d be right. But they aren’t. That’s the issue you’re studiously ignoring. That the majority WON’T be struck, they WON’T get anywhere near the court room, they’re time is 100% WASTED.

I did NOT say it was "48 to get 12". Please try to read what I wrote. 48 is the starting point - with a big well-publicized criminal case you will easily run through 2-3 panels of 48, maybe more. Given the constitutional guarantee of an impartial jury, I don't see any way around that.

Here's the other problem: I know you would feel better if you actually got voir dired, but the court cannot take multiple panels into the courtroom while voir dire is going on.

If the court did that, and one prospective juror engaged in an 'outburst' of some kind, if it were bad enough it would contaminate every prospective juror in the room - "I know he's guilty - he's a drug dealer and everybody knows it" - "I hate insurance companies - they killed my mother and left my family to starve and they're all a bunch of crooks! I can prove it!" Trial court won't take a chance on trying a whole case for 2-3 days and then having an appellate court reverse because the pool was contaminated.

So if they voir dired everyone just to make you happy, they would need even MORE jurors in case of accidents. That's why each panel stays in the jury room until called for. If the lawyers don't use all their strikes (and most don't because they're sensible and it really hacks off the court and the jurors) then you'll never leave the jury room.

But the court has to provide for the loony lawyers, especially the flamboyant criminal defense attorneys who are just there to tweak the judge's nose, angle for a contempt citation, and try to get their clients off by fair means or foul. If you want to blame somebody, blame them. The courts are just trying to checkmate their efforts to burn up the jury pool and let the defendants walk via the Speedy Trial Act.

I wish you could understand about the necessity to prevent unscrupulous people from gaming the system. It's a shame when people are called and don't get to serve, but it's necessary to protect the rights of the accused, and also protect the public from being preyed upon by criminals who otherwise would walk on a technicality.

In the old days, when they ran out of jurors, the sheriff was authorized to just go out on the street and grab as many people as necessary to fill out the panel. They don't do that anymore because of the constitutional requirement of a random jury pool.

It's far from a perfect system, but as Churchill said it's better than all the others that have been tried. And my experience over 30 years is that by and large it works to deliver justice. A court-martial board properly constituted may be a fairer shake, but that will never go in civilian life.

I don’t know why you keep going on and on and on about the selection process. That’s NOT the part that I’m pointing out is broken. The part that’s broken is BEFORE that, the bunch of people that will be called in and NEVER actually go through the selection process. Forget all that actual selection, that’s besides the point. It’s like I’m talking about NFL concussions and you keep blathering about baseball, DIFFERENT THING.

I don’t want to to voir dire everyone to make people happy, I want them to NOT summon people everybody KNOWS they will never voir dire. Depending one where you’re reading the estimate of the percentage of people that get summoned and NEVER serve run from 70% to 90%, and the vast majority of them never go through any form of a selection process. And everybody knows they won’t. The courts are one of the most entrenched bureaucracies on the planet, they know what percentage of people voir dired are going to get knocked out, and they know how many jurors they need, so they know how many people they actually need to call in. And they also know that they’re calling in 2 to 3 times as many as they need. And THAT is a pathetic waste of time for a broken system.

Sorry but this system isn’t even close to the best that’s been tried. In fact it’s pretty much the worst because they have all the data necessary to not do it wrong and they continue to do it wrong. It’s a simple fix really, they have all the data necessary, stop calling in 2 to 3 times as many people as they know they need.

OK, I'm going to try to explain this one more time, then I'm giving up because you simply do not want to understand.

The people who sit in the jury assembly room and are never called are there because of the way the selection process works in the courtroom:

1. If a criminal case goes into intensive voir dire, the extra jurors will be needed because of criminal defense attorneys using as many challenges for cause as they can on top of their peremptory strikes.

2. You cannot confidently predict when this will happen, although you have clues. So you can use up a lot of panels in a hurry with, say, a big murder case and a jury panel that has heard the news about it and formed opinions. Because the jury summons are sent out randomly, you cannot predict how many jurors will be disqualified for cause in any particular case. And judges are inclined to grant peremptories simply because the overall cost of a reversal and retrial is substantial - and wastes everyone's time.

3. If extra jurors are not waiting in the assembly room and a defense attorney is successful in using up every juror on the panel in the courtroom, then said defense attorney will successfully move to dismiss the charges against his client under the Speedy Trial Act. The Act requires the court to have sufficient jurors available to try the defendant when he announces "ready". If they are not there, the defendant will walk.

4. Therefore, the court MUST have a bunch of extra prospective jurors waiting in the jury assembly room. The public fallout from allowing a notorious criminal to walk out of the courtroom a free man is just too great.

I'm sorry, I can't explain it any better than that. And given your inability or refusal to understand, it's probably better if you don't serve on a jury anyway.

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