24 People Whose Time Serving On Jury Duty Was Farrrrrrrr From Boring
Reddit user u/emflare posed the question: "Jurors of Reddit, what is the wildest story you have sitting on trial?" I also found some older Reddit threads featuring other strange jury duty incidents that caught my eye. Here are some of the stories that stood out:
1."While being questioned by the attorneys, one woman in the pool said, 'I don't know if this is the right time to mention this, but the defendant looks just like my ex-husband, and I am having a very angry physical reaction toward him.' She was not selected."
2."Small midwestern town, breaking and entering, the perps broke into a garage and stole frozen sides of beef from a big freezer. It was a drunk, impulsive crime, but they had prepared enough to be concerned about leaving 'fingerprints,' which they had solved by putting socks over their hands. The prosecutor was calmly describing them running on foot with the beef in pillowcases, which were always slipping through their hands because they were clutching them between two socked hands, unable to use their thumbs. I have never struggled so hard to keep a straight face."
3."I was sitting next to a guy after our names were called, and they asked all of us if we had reasons to be dismissed. The guy next to me raised his hand and said, 'I can't read.' The judge dismissed him right there. I was like WTF?"
4."I was one of last jurors to be dismissed for an assault trial. As I was walking to lunch during the break, I saw the defendant assault ANOTHER person on the street. I asked to see the judge in their chambers after they asked if anyone could not be impartial. I didn’t want to say it in front of the other jurors. The defense attorney begged the judge to keep me on the jury (no idea why) after explaining what I had just witnessed. The judge asked me to try and put it out of my mind. I said the defendant was guilty to their faces, and they all asked me to stay on."
5."The trial I was on was wild itself (kidnapping and murder, just horrible), but the funny part was when we, the jury, had to pass a note telling the judge that the defense attorney's zipper was down."
6."A guy next to me kept on taking sips out of a flask he had in his coat pocket."
7."I was on a jury for a trial that lasted six weeks. The defendant was a 70-year-old man, and he was on trial for 16 counts of recording without consent. What he was recording was his encounters with multiple sex workers he brought to his house. For six weeks, we had to watch videos of an old man banging sex workers."
8."The defendant’s wife had taken a female lover, and the man allowed the new partner to live in the house with them. They divided the house down the middle — one half for him, and one half for the two women. By all accounts, he was incredibly generous. They were on trial because the lover accused the man of leaving a wheelbarrow partially on the women's side of the property, causing her to trip and suffer extensive shoulder injuries. When the prosecuting attorney suggested that it was the man’s form of revenge, the judge shut that down right quick. It was later revealed that the lover had an extensive medical history, including being kicked by a horse in her clavicle, and had dealt with many, many medical incidents before the trip and fall. It took us about 20 minutes to find the defendant not guilty, but we waited longer to say we reached a verdict because there was pizza on the way."
9."My father has been called for jury duty multiple times. 20 minutes into deliberation on one of the cases, a female juror stood up and screamed, 'We've gotta get out of here!' and proceeded to bang on the door with both fists until the bailiff came back. He said the reality show Jury Duty was entirely believable after witnessing that."
10."When the judge listed the witnesses and asked if the potential jurors knew any of them, I responded that I knew the police officer. He asked me how, and I said that that offer had arrested me (unrelated to the current trial). The courtroom got a chuckle out of that, and I somehow got selected."
11."A woman had an infection in her finger and went to urgent care. The doctor prescribed some drugs and told the woman to soak her finger in warm water. If it didn’t get better the next day, she should go to the ER. The woman did not get the prescription filled and decided to soak her finger in her condo’s community hot tub. The infection worsened, so her husband dragged her to the ER a few days later. They pumped her full of drugs, but couldn’t stave off amputation. She tried suing the urgent care for not giving her more explicit instructions, not telling her how severe an infection could be, and not forcing her to go the ER that night."
12."The only time I've been called up was 23 years ago, and I was dismissed by the judge. The trial was for felony possession of marijuana. I told the judge I could not remain impartial due to the fact that I smoked weed all the time. He thanked me for my honesty and sent me home."
13."My wife was on a DUI jury where the police cam showed the whole thing. It was the road my parents live on, and one she’s driven probably 1,000 times. It’s a very straight road. He was weaving all over the place, and when he got to his driveway a block from my folks,’ he claimed that he got home okay so there was no case. There was, in fact, a case."
14."A friend told me he was a juror in a trial where the defendant was caught trying to flush a gun down the toilet."
15."Oh man, I had grand jury duty once, and this 20-year-old kid hired a sex worker, got robbed by the sex worker and her pimp, and the pimp tried to VENMO HIMSELF from the kid’s phone. And that’s how he got caught...because of Venmo."
16."One of the prosecutors faked being sick to extend the trial time so they could get more evidence."
17."The accused murderer kept turning around and staring at me so much so that the judge told everyone to stop and asked me if I knew the guy!! I was so scared, I dropped my purse and all the contents. I did not know the guy, and I was promptly let go."
18."First time I served jury duty, during the selection process, one of the lawyers asked a prospective juror if he knew the meaning of 'innuendo.' The prospective juror (obviously trying to get out without serving) responded, 'An Italian enema.' He was removed from the courtroom. All of us just looked at one another, and nobody said a word."
19."The first time I was called for jury duty, I was the first potential juror dismissed because the man on trial was my biological father, whom I hadn’t seen in about a decade."
20."I was on a jury for some harassment/petty property destruction of a father by his son and his son's friend. One morning, one of the young guys didn't turn up in court. Turned out someone had asked him about the trial on his Facebook wall, and he REPLIED PUBLICLY with something like, 'I'm going to get away with it. The judge is an idiot.' It was a good 15 years ago, so someone physically printed it out and handed it into the court."
21."I served on a jury once with the strangest older woman sitting next to me the whole time. She was seriously terrible. She spent most of the trial writing emails on her iPad, doing the crossword puzzle, or sleeping. When she wasn't doing any of that, she was interrupting the testimony to ask people to 'speak up,' ask clarifying questions, make side comments to the other jurors, or to tell the attorneys or even the judge that she thought they weren't supposed to do something based on her misunderstanding of the pre-trial instructions. Her to judge: 'I thought we weren't supposed to consider such-and-such testimony?' Judge: 'If something comes up and I don't want you to consider it, I'll tell you. Now, shut the hell up.'"
"The best part was, once we got into deliberations, she had the audacity to volunteer herself as the foreperson. Every single one of us gave her the biggest side-eye ever, until finally, one woman managed to break through her shock to say, 'I think I'd prefer it if you weren't our foreperson.' We immediately elected that woman as our foreperson.
The older woman also held up our deliberations with rambling anecdotes that had no relevance and a consistent misunderstanding of the legal statutes that we were debating. I still have no idea how she made it on to that jury, but she was genuinely trying to do a good job (when she felt like paying attention)."
22."The only time I got summoned, and thankfully never made it out of the jury pool, was for someone who I thought for sure was going to get held in contempt for his stupidity. The judge was giving a speech on the importance of jury duty and us contributing to the justice system. One of the other prospective jurors got on his cellphone and very loudly started a conversation with someone about the bus schedule. The entire jury pool was looking at him, the bailiff was glaring at him, and the judge paused for a moment before continuing his speech, all while the guy was still talking on his phone. The guy was either extremely disrespectful or so stupid that he didn't realize what he was doing."
23."I was recently on a jury for a murder trial. I thought it would be fine; I’ve been on juries for other violent offenses with no issues. First day of the trial, I found out the murder happened two blocks from my house. The victim was shot at 5:00 a.m. and discovered at about 7:00 a.m. I walk past that exact spot at 6:30 every morning on my way to work. If I hadn’t stayed home sick that day, I would have been the one who found the body."
24."Not me, but my dad was on a jury for a murder trial back in the '80s. He told me most of the jury members felt like the guy did it, but the prosecution did a bad job of presenting the evidence, so they had to acquit him. Six months later, he killed someone else and was convicted for good."
Have you ever had a wild jury duty experience? Tell us in the comments!
Note: Submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity.
