Have you ever served on a jury? I have once and experienced voir dire twice

[MineralMan]

68. Yes. Twice.

The first was a trial of some protesters at a nuclear power plant. We acquitted them all.

The second ended in a mistrial. I was the foreman of that jury, only because I was the only juror who had been on a jury before. That case was about a Black man who was about to be sent to a mental hospital after his original sentence for a burglary had been served. It was an obscure law that was rarely used, and the evidence required to keep him in custody was slim and may have been a lie.

But, he was Black. So half the members of the jury voted to send him into a mental hospital indefinitely. The other half wanted him released. The jury deliberated for a very long time - several days. One juror even made a comment that was racist during the deliberation, something about "those people."

In the end, the jury was hopelessly deadlocked. The District Attorney for the county declined to retry the case, and the man was released. I guess the DA figured that any jury in that county would end up hung and did not pursue it further.

I was very, very disappointed in the jurors who voted to keep the man in custody, despite his serving his entire sentence. It was clearly a racist decision on their parts.