Jury Service - Do it, or else!

[The Man]

I noticed this is GC but I will be uncharacteristically coherent for once.

If I were in your position and I had to make a jury decision on a case, I would absolutely vote to acquit the accused regardless of evidence.

Basically this, unless it were something like a violent crime for which the accused was clearly guilty. On the other hand if it were something stupid like drugs or prostitution I'd definitely vote to acquit regardless of how clear the case of transgression was, since the fact that the laws exist is a clear violation of human liberty to begin with.

Of course, now that I've admitted this publicly, I may have ruined my chances of ever getting jury duty. If they actually care enough to search people's post history on a Final Fantasy message board, which they probably don't.

Nothing so far. I moved out of NZ when I was 18, and have only been on the UK electoral register for a short time now.

DMKA: Surely if you were part of the jury then they could not be found guilty if a single person said 'not guilty', and therefore you could have stopped them being found guilty on any part? Or is it simply a majority vote now on?

WesLY can confirm this for certain, but I believe the way it works is that if it were a criminal trial it would require a unanimous vote to convict, but for civil trials it just goes by majority vote. This sounds like a civil case so basically the guy was smurfed. Isn't our lawsuit-happy "justice" system lovely?

edit: apparently criminal trials require unanimous verdicts if the jury is composed of six people or less, but non-unanimous verdicts have been upheld where the jury was larger. Wikipedia