From: The Daily Dot

By: Grant Pardee

The following article, by Grant Pardee, appeared in the Daily Dot.

What happens to you if you blow off juror duty?

Jail? Fine? or even worse?

Find out here:

Serving jury duty is a civic responsibility and part of what keeps the American judicial system honest. It’s also an inconvenient pain will cost you time and money, unless you’re lucky enough to be in a salaried position that’s OK with you missing an indeterminate amount of time.

Your odds of being chosen for jury duty are actually quite low, according to FiveThirtyEight, which reported that last year only 64,000 people were selected for federal jury service in the United States. That’s significantly less 1 percent of the adult population.

But what happens if you are summoned and decide to ignore it? What happens if you miss jury duty?

The short answer is probably nothing.

The longer answer is also probably nothing, but it depends. The reality is that it’s generally not in the court’s best interests to spend time and resources tracking down people who don’t show up for jury duty. It’s time-consuming; more case dockets to their workload; and is generally a futile and fruitless exercise when the court’s attention could be better spent elsewhere. Not to mention, judges in many areas are electable and accountable to the public, so sending out fines and then sussing out who actually did or did not receive the summons is a headache that most courts would prefer to avoid.

That doesn’t mean, however, you should ignore your summons and not show up for jury duty. Just because it’s unlikely you will be penalized, it can happen.

Click here for FULL article.

From: Press Herald

By: Jessica Gresko

The following announcement appeared in the Press Herald on Friday, January 25, 2019.

The Trump administration can go ahead with its plan to restrict military service by transgender men and women while court challenges continue, the Supreme Court said Tuesday.

The high court split 5-4 in allowing the plan to take effect, with the court’s five conservatives greenlighting it and its four liberal members saying they would not have. The order from the court was brief and procedural, with no elaboration from the justices.

The court’s decision clears the way for the Pentagon to bar enlistment by people who have undergone a gender transition. It will also allow the administration to require that military personnel serve as members of their biological gender unless they began a gender transition under less restrictive Obama administration rules.

The Trump administration has sought for more than a year to change the Obama-era rules and had urged the justices to take up cases about its transgender troop policy immediately, but the court declined for now.

Click here for FULL article.

From: Levin Simes

The following appears on Levin Simes & Abrams web site.

Johnson and Johnson (J&J) lost another verdict regarding its failure to warn about the potential risk of ovarian cancer from talcum powder products. A St. Louis Missouri jury awarded Deborah Giannecchini $2.5 million from J&J in pain and suffering, another $2.5 million from co-defendant Imerys Talc America, and ordered Johnson and Johnson to pay an additional $65 million in punitive damages.

This is not the first verdict against Johnson & Johnson for ovarian cancer. J&J previously had verdicts of $55 million and $72 million against it for hiding the risk of ovarian cancer.

The Plaintiff:

The plaintiff Deborah Giannecchini stated in court she had used talcum powder for feminine hygiene for nearly half a century. Three years prior to trial she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer, a rare disease that is difficult to find and treat early.  She has undergone chemotherapy, radiation, and surgery to try and control the spread of her cancer.  Her doctors have given her an 80% chance of dying from ovarian cancer within the next two years.

Deborah had no knowledge of the potential cancer risks of using talcum powder in this fashion.

Click here for FULL article.

The following article is by Elizabeth W. Stephenson, Court Administrator in Ohio.

The Court of Common Pleas, General Trial Division, along with Clerk of Courts Jeanne Stephen has improved its methods of juror notification. The process of notifying jurors begins with a summons from the Sheriff that tells them the two-week period that they are on call for jury duty.  Following that initial notification, the jurors traditionally needed to telephone a certain number to find out when they need to report. The newest improvement to the system is that the court has contracted with a software vendor called Juror Calling so that a notification goes out to jurors the night before they need to report.  Jurors will receive a text, an email and an automated message with reporting instructions.  Jurors also receive a text and call on the day they are to report.

Jurors can also be notified if a trial is cancelled for any reason.  This method is in addition to the website and the traditional method of the juror calling a certain number the night before their service to find out if they are obligated to report.

Because people’s lives are very busy, and we routinely receive reminders from hair salons and doctor offices, we have come to need and expect these reminders.  We decided that it was time for us to do a better job of getting reminders out to our jurors, using modern technology. In the past, jurors would forget to call to find out the reporting date, or they forgot to come to jury duty and instead go to work. Then the clerk’s office staff would have to call jurors while the courtroom participants wait until the juror leaves work and drives to the courthouse. The new reminder system has almost eliminated all of those problems.  There are reporting days with 100% turnout from the jurors from whom we received a questionnaire and therefore phone numbers.

We very carefully made the decision to use cell, landline, and text messages within this notification system.  We can’t send messages using different methods to jurors within one group. So the whole panel of prospective jurors must receive the same messages using the same methods.  Many people only have landlines. Many younger people only have cell numbers. And some people who have cell numbers do not set up their voicemail. So, we need to call cell numbers and landline numbers, as well as a text message to cell phones.  We have not had any complaints about the redundant messages.

Another improvement that our court made last year is that we upgraded the website and now it includes reporting information for prospective jurors. The Clerk’s office makes a quick change to the website daily so that the reporting information is current.  This way, jurors can check the website to find out whether they need to report for jury duty.

For more information, contact Elizabeth W. Stephenson, Court Administrator, 330-365-3299; st********@co.us

Read our client Testimonials. If you would like to submit a testimonial or just helpful feedback, we would love to hear from you.

Please leave us a review on Facebook or on Google!

Here are some of our favorites.

From: Mental Floss

By: Jessica Hullinger

Good insightful article by Jessica Hullinger.

At some point in your adult life, chances are good you’ll be called to serve jury duty. But the odds that you’ll actually sit on a trial are much lower. What, exactly, makes an ideal juror? What are lawyers on both sides of a case looking for in a lineup of random people? The answer, of course, depends on the case itself. But there are a few general traits attorneys take into consideration when trying to decide whether you’d help or hurt their argument.

Attorneys don’t get to pick their jurors. Instead, using a mixture of intense questioning, keen observation, and stereotyping, they get to eliminate people they think would hurt their case. “It’s not like a baseball team where you can choose your team members,” says Jeffrey Frederick, Director of Jury Research Services at the National Legal Research Groupand author of Mastering Voir Dire and Jury Selection. “It’s not who I want, it’s who I don’t want. What we try to do is think of what backgrounds, life experiences, cognitive styles, opinions, and values jurors might have that would make them less receptive to our case.” Clues like demographics and personality can improve a lawyer’s chance of predicting a juror’s stance on a verdict by up to 15 percent. Here are a few things lawyers take into consideration when trying to figure you out.

1. YOUR RELATIONSHIPS

Attorneys pay close attention to any relationships that might color your opinions. For example, “if it’s a medical malpractice case and there’s a woman and all of her friends are nurses, that might bias her a little bit,” says Matthew Ferrara, Ph.D, a trial consultant and forensic psychologist. And if you have friends or family in law enforcement, that’s a big red flag. “In a criminal case, relationship to someone in law enforcement is paramount,” Ferrara says. “People who are probation officers, police officers, jailers or are related to the same type of profession would be probably viewed as biased toward the prosecution.”

2. YOUR EXPERIENCE WITH THE LAW

Even if you aren’t directly related to a police officer or member of the judicial system, you can still have opinions about law enforcement rooted in your own personal experiences. Perhaps you feel you were unfairly ticketed for speeding, or you’ve been the victim of police profiling. This is all very important, because research shows that when juries deliberate, they spend 50 percent of their time talking about their own personal experiences as a way of judging the case. To sniff out bias, lawyers will ask jurors if they agree with statements like, “If someone is charged, they’re probably guilty,” or “Laws do more to protect the rights of criminal defendants and too little for victims and families,” or “Would you believe the testimony of a police officer based solely on his position as an officer?”

The defense is going to look for people who are more open-minded about the law, and don’t always believe that it makes the right call. The plaintiff attorney or prosecutor will generally look for people more inclined to trust authority.

One quick way to get dismissed from a jury, according to Tom King, a former Deputy Prosecutor in Indiana, is to voice strong opinions about the legal system: “Say, ‘I’ve read about these criminal prosecutions where the police and the prosecutors made up evidence and I just don’t think it’s a fair system.’”

Click here for remaining 7 things and FULL article.