I’ve never personally been called on for jury duty, but I know that my time will probably come one day…
And if you’ve ever had to do it, you know that you have to miss work AND you lose out on money while you’re on a jury, so a lot of folks just can’t make it work.
But a lawyer named Reb posted a video on TikTok where she argued that people need to stop skipping jury duty if they don’t have a good reason.
She said, “If you are called for jury duty, and you do not have a legitimate reason for getting out of it, and you also happen to be a sane, rational person capable of making objective decisions, do you mind not trying to get out of it?”
Reb added, “I’m talking about the fact that most jury trials that go on aren’t those murder cases.”
An example she used was, “An employee suing their employer for money that they are owed because they were injured on the job due to the employer’s negligence.”
She said that because so many people get out of jury duty, the remaining jurors are usually “a crew of characters” and she added, “I can tell you statistically that juries around the nation are very underrepresented for minorities, young people, and for people of low income.”
Reb went on to say that older white people who make a good income are usually those who are left.
She said that most trials are only a few days long and she argued, “You being on it can make a difference. I’m not telling you that this is going to fix [the justice system], but I am telling you that there are literally people who are not allowed to serve on juries.”
Reb explained that most states won’t let people with felonies serve on juries and that further complicates things because of the high percentage of black people who have been convicted of felonies despite being only 13% of the population of the U.S.
She asked, “Imagine how many felony convictions, past ones, are mari****** convictions, for example?”
Reb finished her video by saying, “It would be nice if some of you rational, capable people could maybe try to stop the whole ‘ha-ha, funny, laugh, how do we get out of jury duty?’”
Check out what she had to say.
@rebmasel 🙃
And here’s how people reacted.
One viewer said people who have to do jury duty should be paid their full wages.
Another individual said she can’t afford to be a juror.
And this TikTokker said there’s no way they’re doing jury duty.
Yeah, they really need to pass some laws so better people can do this type of important work.
Source: https://twistedsifter.com/2023/09/we-know-its-broken-a-lawyer-said-people-should-stop-trying-to-get-out-of-jury-duty-because-theyre-needed-to-right-the-wrongs-of-society/
