I've only been to one jury selection process (it was in Toronto) and defied the odds and wound up as a juror. It was a little different in that there was only one trial we were being selected for. It was a retrial for murder.
Before they started calling names, they told us who was on trial, who the victim was, who the police involved in the case were, who the lawyers were and asked if anyone knew these people. If you did you were dismissed.
Then they asked if you had read about the case or heard about it in the news. I believe you were dismissed at that point as well if you had.
Then they asked if anyone couldn't serve due to not understanding english - funny part was someone was later selected and had no idea what the judge was asking him. He didn't understand the earlier question about speaking english as he didn't speak english.
Afterwards they started drawing names. The first two selected actually weren't on the jury, they were almost an approval committee. When the third name was selected they had the power to dismiss the juror if they felt they weren't appropriate. If they were found appropriate the lawyers got to ask a few questions and accepted or challenged the juror. If you were challenged you went home. When they accepted someone, that person was juror number 1, one of the two original approvers was dismissed and juror number 1 and the remaining approver now got to be the approval committee. On and on it went until there were 12 and 2 alternates. (I should also add that when you were called up you had a chance to tell the judge why you couldn't serve. Trips already planned and financial hardship were the most common reasons that he let people go)
Anyways short story long I found it was an important thing to do once. I saw how the legal system worked, and experienced a trial from beginning to end.
The irritating part was there were random days off when there were no witnesses or the judge had something else he had to do. Because I'm a teacher I had to plan stuff for my kids to do and then randomly show up in class for a day here or there so logistically it wasn't fun. I had 2 classes of grade 12 physics and the kids were not impressed that I was gone for basically a month.
If people really want more details I can provide them but the gist of what happened was a man in an apartment building killed his senior citizen neighbour, stole her credit cards, and shopped with them for the next two days. We had a choice of acquittal, murder in 2nd degree, or manslaughter. We convicted him of 2nd degree murder.
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