Lucky me.
Mecklenburg County has requested my presence on September 21st for the purpose of serving on a Jury. I have significant trepidation about this task. I’m not sure I can physically do what is necessary, but also not thrilled in having a doctor visit to get excused.
Here is how it works
Jury Orientation
I only remember this happening twice before. The procedure seems fairly uniform. You call the evening before, and if they don’t need you, you’re off the hook for at least two years. That was how I escaped once. If you are told you need to appear, you are due at 8 AM, a time I am not familiar with. After checking in and filling out paperwork, around 9 AM, the official fun begins. You may or may not get shoved into a selection process. If not, you may be released and you’re done. Once in the selection room, they pick people randomly. Lawyers on either side (or the judge) can dismiss you. If they fill the jury and you weren’t randomly picked, you’re released. That’s how I escaped the second time. In that case, the jury was told their only role would be to determine the award for back pain in a car accident. No finding of fact – the fault was stipulated, just figuring out how much the damage was.
Courthouse is in downtown Charlotte. Parking is free in a deck about a block away. Lunch is not provided and restaurants are sketchy. Lunch is normally 12:30-1:55 There is a cafe on the first floor – they probably get rent free to have cheap prices. It is possible I might just eat from vending machines.
The orientation lays out pretty clearly that to a large degree the process is a bluff. Once the jury is in place, the expectation is the parties will make a settlement and the jury will do nothing.
On the positive side, this gives me a reason to explore uptown. Parking meters are turned off Saturday and Sunday. The Courthouse parking garage is $4 if you’re in by 9 AM. Parking in Charlotte is plentiful. You can spend $20 a day if you want to, but it isn’t necessary. Meter parking is $1/Hr up to two hours.
Any questions?
Is the summons for District Court or Superior Court? District Court here in MA requires you to be available for about a week, on a daily basis if needed. Superior Court can be lengthy depending on the case or if impounded. If you think that could be the case, bite the bullet and get a doctor’s excuse.
I’ve been called several times for District, but have never served. Each time I called the night before and was excused and am now excused for three years. The closest time was sitting for several hours while lawyers worked out a plea bargain.
Good luck.
Each state organizes its courts differently, creating confusion. In New York, Supreme Courts are a relatively low level Court. From your description, it sounds like Massachusetts and North Carolina are similar.
NC created a uniform court system statewide in 1966 – prior to that, everyone basically made up their own rules. Courts are funded by the state now to remove the incentive for using courts as revenue sources for local governments.
Superior Courts handle trials that concern issues of facts and handle felony criminal cases and civil cases over $10,000. While Superior Court judges are elected within a county, they rotate every 6 months to a different region of the state.
We also have district courts, generally within each county. Magistrates are assigned by the district court to handle civil infractions (speeding tickets), small claims cases, disposing of cases via plea bargain, but don’t do jury trials.
The summons says “by order of the Superior court”, but It looks like the Superior Court clerk rounds up juries for both courts, so I’m not sure I’ll know until then. Given that it looks like you won’t be seated until 10 AM, then break for lunch at 12:30 and reconvene at 2 PM and go home at 5 PM, if it is a single day case, that means not very much actual time doing anything. Presumably, on the second day, the fun would start at 9 AM
Seems a more fair setup. In NJ, small towns have their own courts and they are usually co-located in the same buildings as the police departments so that your judge drinks his coffee from the same coffee pot at the police officer that is accusing you.
You’re describing what a magistrate does. They are part of the district court, but not necessarily working out of the county courthouse
Here is a blurb about magistrates in Mecklenburg
http://wfae.org/post/look-inside-mecklenburg-countys-peoples-court
They are not required to be lawyers, are appointed, and make $40k a year. According to the county web site, there are 22 criminal magistrates, 4 civil and one that handles special cases
Reading a bit more, the district court only does “bench trials” for misdemeanors – if you want a jury trial, the case is moved to Suprior Court. The district court can do some of the preliminary work, probably mostly encouraging the prosecutor and accused to negotiate a deal. I notice on the map, there is a separate building for pretrial services – my assumption is that is where depositions, pretrial discovery and negotiations take place. The state has also experimented with specialized courts like a business court to handle complex business disputes that require knowledge beyond just of the state laws
Cool, I am impressed Fred. Its good that you are going to do your civic duty, in-spite of trepidation. I remember seeing that movie ‘Twelve Angry Man’ in school.
You could be Henry Fonda. You haven’t been in Charlotte to awful long, were you ever called for jury duty in Connecticut ?
My wife has been called twice, picked for a jury once and hen about three quarters of the way through the trial, they plea bargained and the jury was dismissed. You may get $45 or more a day “wow’ !
take a book to read, and tell them Bill clinky was the reason NK and KimJung got a nuke . They will dismiss you, they don’t want to hear the truth
Parrott
I lived in CT for 14 years and was never called up. NC pays $12 a day for the first day, $20 a day for days 2-5 and $40 a day thereafter.
The process here is they make up a “master list” every two years, combining driver’s licenses and voter registrations and possibly third party sources. They randomize the list and each month just peel off names in sequence from the randomized list. If it turns out to be a drug case, would I get in trouble if I mentioned wanting to remove pot as a Federal class 1 drug? Superior Court juries have 12 members.
It will be interesting to see what kinds of people show up. This is the Superior Court for Mecklenburg County. For election purposes, the 26th district is broken into three pieces – from the Map It is clear the intent is to make sure one of districts is mostly black (probably Voting Rights Act related)….
Mecklenburg County has just a bit over a million people, of which about 800,000 live in the city of Charlotte. Many government functions have been combined between the city and county. There are a few towns like Pineville, Huntersville, Davidson and Matthews that have not given up their autonomy, but as a practical matter Mecklenburg County is Charlotte. About 30% of the population is black. It will be interesting to see if they show up in proportionate numbers. The claim that voter ID laws prevent blacks from voting suggests they may be underrepresented in the Jury Master List.
>The claim that voter ID laws prevent blacks from voting suggests they may be underrepresented in the Jury Master List.
It is actually the laws that that prevent convicts from voting that keeps more blacks from voting – it ties back to the war on drugs and the schedule one issue. (Why was a Constitutional Amendment required to ban a man made drink (alcohol) but not to ban a god made plant? )
We’re allowed to have phones and electronic devices in the waiting area, so if I luck out, maybe I can play Pokemon. There is apparently also a computer room where I could go watch porn….
Being told to show up on Wednesday is probably significant. I suspect big cases generally start on Monday and they might take two days handling motions and push for pretrial settlement before they are ready to assemble a jury.
There is a survey you fill out before you hit the screening process. It doesn’t show up on an iPad. My guess is it asks the basic qualifications (18, citizen, not a felon) and maybe a few background questions to speed up screening – employer, any relatives who are police, are you a lawyer, are you a Communist, etc…
I was tapped for jury duty in May. Had a high number but got on a jury anyway. The case was breaking and entering and robbery of a Dollar General store. Two masked men, one wearing red tennis shoes. The police had their man, they found a pair of red tennis shoes in a nearby mobile home and arrested the owner of the shoes when he fled after reading on facebook that police were looking for him. Several transient adults lived in the mobile home and drug paraphernalia was found. The young man was known to be a simpleton and could not have planned the robbery. He worked for his dad at a lumber company. He sat in jail for almost 2 years. After watching the security videos the prosecution rested their case.
The judge instructed the attorneys to approach the bench. We overheard her say to the assistant district attorney “This is ALL you’ve got? A pair of red tennis shoes? Case DISMISSED!” The judge was clearly embarrassed and apologized to the jury. I didn’t get called back that week. I was paid $25 for my time. The lost business for the week (you’re not allowed to do work even while stuck in the waiting room) amounted to $3000.00
Apparently Floyd County Georgia is not finished trying to kill my ability to make a living. Last week I recieved another jury summons to serve in September. Apparently since the case was dismissed and the jury did not get a chance to deliberate, it’s as if I never severed back in May. My summons number has me at the top of the list. Wonderful.
I forget where I go this insight – possibly Tom Snyder… A problem with the criminal justice system is the police and prosecutors are chasing the metrics of solved cases and convictions to prove they’re doing a good job. That can create a mentality of “can we convict this person?” instead of “did they do it?”. Once a suspect is identified who can be convicted, looking for facts stops. Frequently, police ignore or the prosecutor will ignore exculpatory evidence. If the suspect doesn’t have money to hire a good lawyer and investigator, it’s off to prison.
My time has arrived. Calling the number indicates they do want me at Charlotte Mecklenburg Courthouse on 4th street at 8 AM Wednesday morning.
As it turns out, the Gold line streetcar runs on Trade Street, which is essentially 4 1/2th street, so maybe I’ll wind up with a streetcar ride out of the deal.
The eastern end of the streetcar line is (Novant) Presbyterian Hospital, the big downtown hospital, the most likely place people are taken if I have a Hillary moment, which is a possibility.
A related piece of information – my niece, the doctor has left Charlotte permanently. As of a week ago, she is living in the East Village in New York City. While she was living here, she had a few hours off on a weekend, and we discussed what we might do. I offered the idea that we could go to the hospital and she could give me the tour, since she worked for Novant, although not at the hospital. I indicated that if I did wind up in the hospital, it would be helpful to know the general layout, how to use the parking garage and maybe we could ride the streetcar. She immediately said No, that she had already been to the hospital. Ok, fine. So let’s eat somewhere… after suggesting a few places I like (that don’t serve wine), she ended the conversation in disgust and declared “let’s just not do anything”
Lack of empathy is a big problem for a primary care doctor. So both of the people who encouraged me to move here have moved far away. Free at last!
well hells bells, that’s a bummer Fred. who moves to NYC ? You got riots in Charlotte now, no need to move to the action.
Good luck on the ’12 angry men’ jury, : )
I’m sure the young fellow that set the truck on fire on I-85 is going to be a ‘doctor’ one day.
parrott
I was lucky – in college as I was winding up my accounting degree, I discovered I was very good at programming – by about the third day I was teaching the professor 😉 I would do programming even if nobody paid me. Oops, that’s what I’m doing here!
My niece thought being a doctor would force her to like interacting with other people. It only reinforced that she doesn’t like people. As a young naive doctor, the druggies descended on her to get their opioid prescriptions. Amazingly, people will lie to doctors! She is up to her wazoo in debt and digging the hole deeper, hopping on airplanes every weekend going somewhere, anywhere. My suggestions to go places to learn more about North Carolina or Charlotte were rebuffed. She didn’t want to understand her patients, she wanted to fix them. Perhaps I could have helped, but not if the door is slammed shut. Oh well.
I’m home. I didn’t escape without going to the courthouse. It was a slow day, only one trial on the docket. About 50 people showed up, it was whittled down to 35. My hearing issues were a problem, but only really for the judge. He has not near his microphone. They rounded up a Bluetooth hearing device which worked fine.
The highlight was after the 12 people were asked if they knew anyone involved in the case and multiple times said no, when it was the defense attorney’s turn she turned to one jury who is a high school English teacher and asked “do you remember that the défendent was a student of yours?”… Oops!
I used Uber both ways. The driver coming back home has been called for jury duty too, so I told him about the process. He is an immigrant – he came to the US at age 17. I asked if he would indulge me if I guess what part of Europe he was from. He played along. I guessed Slovenia – “that was very close”… it turns out he was from Kosovo, and I brought the breakup of the Soviet Union, the death of Tito and the breakup of Yugoslavia. I wasn’t looking at Wikipedia. There is no substitute for acrually knowing stuff. It was an enjoyable trip home.