One of my Co-workers is a noted troublemaker. As I am sure you are all aware, we are having a spot of bother over here with criminals misusing knives. She tried to claim that my SAK is an offensive weapon. It isn't. I should be arrested. It should be taken away from me . I might kill someone with it etc, etc, etc. So I pointed out to her, in the nicest fashion possible, that I could see half a dozen items around her desk that would make perfect murder weapons. Starting with that chair she was sat on......
The point is of course that even if your buck naked, you still have all the know how inside your head. Improvise.

If anyone at work comments on the little 3" Kershaw Vapor that I've taken to carrying clipped inside my waistband (so as not to alarm the natives) I'm going to march them down to the break room/kitchen, open a drawer, and slap the half-dozen really nasty looking kitchen knives in there down on the counter.

- Tom S.

On this side of the pond, you do as you're told. That goes for on the job -- or on the jury. The judge likes to maintain control just as much as your manager does.

That's "interesting." Does that mean that if The Judge says " I say that man is Guilty and you will, By God, find him Guilty!" you are going to do as you are told? The Judges job is to ensure fair play, rule on matters of law and to make sure that the defendant receive's a fair trial. Not tell a Jury what it may or may not think. Ok, fundamental urban survival skill: making sure that you know exactly what the Judge may or may not do. P.s. As a point:- In the trial overhere the Judge stopped the trial, recused himself and passed the matter over to another Judge with a different Jury.

"Does that mean that if The Judge says ' I say that man is Guilty and you will, By God, find him Guilty!' you are going to do as you are told?"

Such an instruction would certaintly result in the verdict being appealed and overturned. Oddly enough, I have heard that in some states judges can overturn a guilty verdict however.

Can we assume that's sarcasm? There are most definitely some informed jurors on this side of the pond, and we have a LOT more rights than most judges or Prosecuting Attorneys or DAs or ADAs want us to know about. Our duty is to uphold the law, but in many cases, the law is contradictory, loaded with politicized terminology or simply shouldn't apply to ALL circumstances. It is our duty as American Citizens to base any verdict on the law, the evidence and the situation, including common sense. I've even read where laws were essentially nullified/ignored by the jury. There's plenty to read on this and trust me when I say that there are a lot of folks who don't want juries to be informed.

Part of the problem of our system is that every marginally intelligent potential juror sees avoiding jury duty as the real "duty". They need to pay a reasonable wage for jurors and pass laws to insure that companies of a certain size must continue salaries to those involved in long trials. For smaller companies, a nationwide "jury employment insurance" of some sort would go a long way toward putting more people on the stand than government workers.

And the process is meant to streamline everything to make the DA's job simpler... why inform jurors of ALL the rights they have when you can tell them about the ones the DA cares about?

You're quite correct. But I shall be long dead before that happens. And it never will. I look upon jury duty as onerous. Time lost. Tasks left undone. As soon as the orientation official starts droning on about obligations and responsibilities I know someone is about to force me to eat my vegetables.

The best way to avoid it is to just tell the truth. I was summoned back in February for a civil suit involving personal injury. I was excused after I admitted that I thought the large awards paid out in the tobacco settlement were a crock. I'll admit I felt a little like a red-headed stepchild as I slunk out of the jury room with all the other rejects though. <img src="/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

Agree. I went down to the court house after receiving a jury summons, sat in the jury box for all of 3 minutes during jury questioning and was immediately removed by the plaintiff's attorney -- total waste of time.

I work for myself now and will not pay myself during jury duty. So when the summons arrive I let them know that I don't get paid by my employer for jury duty and that's the end of it.

Earlier this year, Carol Asher of Idaho was jailed by the judge for mentioning to another (snitch) juror that she "answered to a higher authority than the judge" and would "vote her conscience". The case is now over, the charges were dismissed, Ms. Asher is free, and she owes $16,000 in attorney costs to defend herself against charges of felony perjury that should never have been filed.

http://proliberty.com/observer/20060202.htm

There are some informed jurors. Most are not. Most believe that you have to obey the judge. You are often asked if you WILL agree to obey the judge before you are accepted for jury duty.

Quoting an article by Iloilo Marguerite Jones in the American Juror I received this week: "What struck me most significantly... was that the jurors actually did not know their rights and did not know they could not be punished for their deliberations or verdict, and the laywer one juror called didn't know the truth either. Yet the jurors should have known, and every lawyer, including all judges, should be telling them about their rights, their authority, and their immunity."
http://fija.org/index.php?page=displaytxt&id=162&refer=news

But they're not. Jurors are deliberately lied to, or lied to by omission of information or evidence. I've mentioned the dumbing down of Americans before, and this is one of the horror stories that goes along with it.