I have it tomorrow, and I live in the state of Florida.

  • Remember that jury nullification exists. If you’re being asked to convict on something that’s bullshit, you can just say not guilty and the court can’t tell you that you gave the wrong answer.

    This is a double edged property. It can be used as easily to shield some guy smoking pot from jail as a hate crime.

    Just don’t tell them you’re nullifying because they’ll remove you.

    • Don’t mention jury nullification at all. Don’t even hint at it, not even with your fellow jurors. You will be replaced by an alternate juror if the judge gets a whiff of this.

      The path to nullification may be a lonely and socially painful one in the deliberation room, and may result in a hung jury. You may have to stubbornly refuse to convict, against the pleading & cajoling of your eleven peers, and do it without revealing your true motive of nullification.

  • If selected, you will likely need to debate with utter morons during deliberation. It’s extremely annoying. I was curious about the experience until then and will absolutely do everything possible to avoid landing on another one.

  • Dress decently and bring a book or some other way to entertain yourself, you should mostly expect being bored. Most cases plea out so they wind up not needing most people they call in, so you might not even make it to the selection process.

  • Just throw the notices out. My father has been doing this for nearly 30 years in Florida. I’ve been doing the same in California for decades. Sure, they’ll be threatening letters and such, throw those out too.

  • In my state going into the courthouse is a bit like getting on a plane. after that its just boring so have a book, tablet, laptop, game system. When you are in the court though for selection you are not allowed to use any of it and have to hurry up and wait while they call folks up and interogate them. In the general pool room though its basically like a high school study hall.

  • It likely depends on the courthouse, but generally speaking you’ll show up, sign in, someone will give a little talk about how things work, and then you’ll wait in a waiting room for a few hours while various names are called. Then you’ll go into the court room and the actual jurors will get selected from the pool. They’ll ask some questions and depending on the answer some people will get removed (having a family member who’s a police officer is pretty common).

    If you’re not selected, you’ll probably go back to the waiting room to see if you get pulled for another case. If you are, you’ll sit and listen to the details of the case and eventually make a determination. Depending on the case/jurisdiction, you might also be a “backup juror” where you’ll sit through the entirety of the case, but won’t actually be part of the deliberation at the end unless another juror had to drop out for some reason.

    I ended up getting a murder trial, which was pretty interesting. Overall wasn’t a horrible experience, but definitely glad I brought a Steam Deck while I was waiting.

  • It was a pleasant experience for me here in NJ. The building had WiFi and a quiet area with desks for anyone who wanted or needed to get some work done. The staff ran a tight ship, but they were friendly about it. It was very easy to get dismissed for various reasons, which is what happened to me. I’m glad I wasn’t because it was a murder trial with a young defendant, which would have been a bummer.