r/nottheonion • u/ArgentineBeauty • 19h ago

Reese Witherspoon Chosen as Jury Foreman After Jurors Thought She Went to Law School Because of Legally Blonde

https://www.fashiontimes.co.uk/reese-witherspoon-jury-duty-mix-1763528
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u/Mr_Baronheim 18h ago

My concern started when a coworker who was serving on a jury told me that in one case they couldn't decide on a verdict, but ultimately chose guilty because they found the defense attorney to be annoying.

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u/Dr_Insano_MD 18h ago

This is why when I get jury duty summons, I do not try to get out of it like most people seem to. I've yet to actually need to show up (I'm just on-call), but man, juries have someone's future or even life in their hands. I know if I were sitting in that defendant seat, I'd want the jury to take the matter seriously. So I should do the same.

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u/mavajo 15h ago edited 14h ago

I've been on two juries, and I'm grateful that I was on both. I was stunned both times during deliberations. Especially the second one. This was a man that sexually and physically assaulted his girlfriend, breaking her orbital bone, lacerating her spleen, strangling her until she passed out from oxygen deprivation - and then had sex with her again.

The jury was split 6/6 on our first vote. I couldn't believe it.

The wildest thing is that the jurors arguing the strongest for a Not Guilty verdict were women. They kept blaming her for it with the reasoning that if it was so bad then she should have left him. They basically accused her of just trying to get even with him and that they didn't want to "ruin his life" with a guilty verdict. Thankfully a woman in her 20s and a dad girl dad were sitting on either side of me, and the three of us agreed we were absolutely not changing our votes and would stay as long as it took. It bled into the next day, but eventually we got to consensus and found him guilty.

Turned out he had multiple prior convictions and had another unrelated case going on involving assault. Guy was a piece of shit.

But that experience reinforced for me the importance of having good people on the jury. Please folks, I know it's a burden and pain in the ass, but if you have a job or circumstances that allows you to do it - please do it. We gave that woman justice that day. But it very easily could have gone another direction.

The three of us stayed to hear the verdict and sentencing. He got 25 years. The prosecutor came up to us afterwards and thanked us, because way too many guys like him get off.

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u/thetiredtypist 15h ago

The three of us stayed to hear the verdict

The other jurors could leave before the verdict was read?

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u/mavajo 14h ago

Sorry, I meant sentencing. Brain fart.

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u/gsfgf 4h ago

Sentencing often isn't even the same day.

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u/DenverTechGuru 3h ago

I wish I could. I never make it past voir dire. Something about college educated that acknowledges the justice system is flawed under oath doesn't appeal to the attorneys.

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u/Yakubs_2nd_Brain 2h ago

You just made me reconsider just based on the fact that I hate my job. Maybe I won't immediately throw the unopened letter in the trash next time.

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u/Askol 9h ago

Isn't every job required to keep paying you during jury duty?

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u/mavajo 9h ago

Nope. Land of the free baby!

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u/highheelcyanide 1h ago

My adopted sister was tortured as a baby by being dipped into boiling water. It was very clear it was deliberate. When it went to trial the first time, there was one juror that wouldn’t give in to the not guilty verdict. They saved my sister’s life.

It went back to trial and he was found guilty. I think about that one person a lot.

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u/GoldenPigeonParty 17h ago

The more serious and logical you are, the less likely you are to be selected.

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u/Thechasepack 16h ago

I've found the opposite. Both sides typically think their argument is the correct legal argument so they want people to think logically and apply the law correctly.

I was in a jury pool for a women who killed her kid earlier this year (not in Massachusetts). Jury Selection questions from both sides were mostly about finding people who could evaluate the case based on the law rather than emotions (with added questions from the defense on how we feel about punishment for young kids).

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u/_thenational 14h ago

the only jury I've ever been on was a guy suing his car insurance company for whatever. a lot of the questions they asked us centered around whether we could be fair based on our past experiences with insurance companies. lots of people were like, no, obviously not, insurance companies have fucked me six ways from sunday. those of us who were a little less hostile got selected.

joke's on them though because the deliberations basically boiled down to "whether or not this guy is legally right is irrelevant, obviously the slimy insurance company is fucking him and he seems nice enough, let's give it to him"

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u/gsfgf 4h ago

Civil juries are a completely different animal from criminal. Civil juries are basically random.

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u/No-Advice-6040 15h ago

Turned up to my first looking like a student, wearing a big heavy Tommy Hilfiger jacket. Selected for a week long trial. Turned up to my second looking decent, had to check in every damn morning to not be selected for anything and wasted my week.

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u/Fuzzy-Jaguar-1828 14h ago

No, during voir dire each side’s counsel will run out of no’s eventually. Once they are down to the last few possible jurors called they pretty much have to say yes. So if you are one of the last people they interview you have to be a juror basically.

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u/c-9 16h ago

you will be if you keep your mouth shut.

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u/oddministrator 16h ago

Well into middle aged and have never been summoned.

If there's anything people who know me would describe me as, it's "logical." Often to a fault, in many people's eyes.

Do they know?

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u/AipomNormalMonkey 16h ago edited 16h ago

I know a couple, he's gotten 4 summons, she's never had one.

Eventually they figured out that in their area they only register you for jury duty if you have a vehicle registered in your name.

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u/oddministrator 15h ago

My ex lived with me and got summoned multiple times, I never did. We both had vehicles in our names, the house was in mine.

Could be "luck," but it's really surprising. I love my job and have tons I need to do at it so any time away would be disruptive and generally unwelcome, but after 30 years I'm wondering if I have some sort of judicial cooties.

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u/AipomNormalMonkey 15h ago

it's possible it was a single clerical oversight

the only reason that couple figured it out was because he tutored the daughter of the property manager at their apartment complex

after they moved out, the new tenants brought any mail they received to the property manager who delivered them when he was tutoring...a few weeks after he received it he realized he updated his address for almost all government purposes...he overlooked the vehicle

based on how many hours it would take to make it to their court house by public transit it made sense...anyone without a car could claim undue travel burden and be excused anyway

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u/c-9 16h ago

I have been summoned maybe 7 times in the last 25 years? I've lost count honestly.

I live in St Louis. St Louis Metro area is about 2M people, but the city itself is about 300k. The big Eastern MO courts here only pull jury pools from St Louis city population. If I lived 3 miles away in St Louis County chances are I'd go a lifetime without being summoned.

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u/oddministrator 15h ago

That's what's confusing for me. I've been registered to vote in and had a vehicle registered in my name within city limits (most often in a situation very similar to STL -- metro > 1M, but live in the city of ~1/3 that) for three decades.

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u/DocileBanalBovlne 14h ago

I can't remember my dad ever being summoned, but my mom has a few times. Coincidentally, she was pregnant every time she got a summons so she never had to follow through.

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u/oddministrator 14h ago

Abortion is illegal in my state because the government contends an embryo is a person.

Sounds like a pregnant juror should get two votes, to me.

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u/GuanoLoopy 16h ago

I have yet to serve on one either, but I would happily do so. Only had it twice where I had to call the day before and I wasn't needed.

My SO was on a jury and said it was very likely the guy was guilty (robbery or something similar) but the prosecutors did such a bad job they found him not guilty.

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u/ncnotebook 16h ago

I've gotten so many damn jury letters.

I fear that once I do get called, I'll be that guy where "he/she probably did it, but the evidence hasn't convinced me enough to be sure." Pretty sure many people won't care about that difference.

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u/pookiemook 11h ago

I've never been summoned (but I'd like to be, and not for entertainment purposes), and I have the same fear. I could imagine myself being the one holdout on a hung jury if everyone else is going off of vibes and dismissing the legal prompts.

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u/ncnotebook 5h ago

And when they get frustrated enough, you know many people will go for appeals to emotion or insult you or think you're stubborn.

What if the victim was your daughter/son? They were innocent, too!

And what if your daughter/son was the defendant, similarly innocent? Should 2 lives be unjustly ruined instead of 1?

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u/RankWeis2 15h ago

In the movie “The Trial of the Chicago Seven” one of the Rasta’s says something like

“isn’t this supposed to be a jury of my peers? Where’s one person that looks like me sitting out there?”

“Have you ever responded to a jury summons?”

“….”

There’s great moments in that movie but even as someone who believes in going to my summons’, this line stuck with me

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u/RedeRules770 8h ago

Seriously, it pisses me off so much when people try to get out of it. If it were you, you’d want someone on the jury that cared about doing a decent job!

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u/-fry- 6h ago

Juries are made up of twelve people too stupid to get out of jury duty.

-Harvey Specter

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u/Lord_Alonne 18h ago

Jesus fucking christ...

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u/ChangeForAParadigm 18h ago

He’s a defense attorney now?!

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u/Dub-MS 17h ago

Always has been

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u/ChangeForAParadigm 17h ago

My God

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u/sidepart 12h ago

Well...if you have him on retainer, I guess.

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u/ecmcn 17h ago

I had the opposite experience. The cop in this drunk driving case would look at us in a certain way during his testimony and I couldn’t quite put my finger on what I didn’t like about him. Turned out everyone felt that way, and during deliberations one of the jurors said “he was… smarmy”, and everyone was like “yeah, that’s it!” But we all had to admit there wasn’t any reason to not believe him - the driver had clearly been drinking and there were weird things on the defense side, too. We voted guilty.

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u/RegulatoryCapture 15h ago

IMHO that's fair. The cop is a witness and his testimony is supposed to be evaluated by the jury. "I don't know why, but I just don't trust him" is fair enough. Or you can still trust him if there's other evidence that supports it.

But it is a dick move to apply that to someone's lawyer. Lawyer charisma absolutely matters, but their words are not evidence and you shouldn't be deciding based on whether you trust the lawyer. Lawyers aren't under oath, you shouldn't trust what they say.

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u/gsfgf 4h ago

Literally what you're there for

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u/matjoeman 18h ago

I've been on one jury and it radicalized me against juries.

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u/pihkal 1h ago

The problem is, the no-jury alternative is worse.

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u/ncnotebook 17h ago

I've been in one democracy and it radicalized me against democracies.

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u/Autumn1eaves 17h ago

I'd fully lose my mind if I went to jail, and they later told me this.

I'd go insane. I'd have to be committed.

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u/bluart06 16h ago

My fellow jurors didn’t like the prosecuting attorney on the trial I served on because she used a fancy technical term for a stop light.

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u/Effective-One6527 11h ago

If it was semaphore they are right not to like her. Attorneys should know better.

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u/bluart06 10h ago

I think it was? I definitely left feedback on the comment cards we got at the very end 😆

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u/Quickjager 14h ago

Honestly just as much the defense attorney's fault. They get a say on who sit for the jury.