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Michael Stipe nips out of jury duty
Michael Stipe wasn't much interested in being considered part of peers of a man accused of sneaking into a High School:
Stipe told Clarke County Superior Court Judge Lawton Stephens on Monday he could not be fair and impartial in the case because he has been the target of stalkers and death threats, the Athens Banner-Herald reported.
Apparently, this was enough to get him off. Although I'm a little confused as to when being a victim of crime made you incapable of being on a jury, we're sure Stipe didn't make an excuse simply to avoid doing his duty.
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Although I'm a little confused as to when being a victim of crime made you incapable of being on a jury, we're sure Stipe didn't make an excuse simply to avoid doing his duty.
Something like this is considered (rightly or wrongly) in the States to be an indicator that you won't be able to be fair and impartial; apparently the concern is that you'll vote guilty just because to you, everyone accused of a crime is irredeemable scum.
Also, jury duty here is often seen (also, whether rightly or wrongly) as something only schmucks or people with nothing better to do get involved with, hence the joke: "I don't agree with jury by one's peers, who wants to be tried by people too dumb to get out of jury duty?"
Blimey... does that mean that jury selection involves trying to find twelve people who haven't been victims of crime? Isn't that virtually impossible, though?
Tell me about it. But it's something that plenty of lawyers for the defense use to their advantage during the voir dire phase of jury selection.
And conversely, lawyers for the prosecution will try to have potential jurors dismissed if there's a concern that because of their race or background, they might be too sympathetic to the defendant.
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