Jury Duty

Jury service is necessary for our society to function because it’s an opportunity to reflect on our shared constitutional values. Jury duty is an obligation of citizenship just like paying your taxes or voting. You are invited to participate and be involved in the most personal, and tragic events in the community. A jury decides whether a person lives or dies or whether a company goes bankrupt. “It may well be the closest you ever come to the Constitution- not just exercising a right it gives you, but participating in the process through which constitutional rights and values come alive in practice” (FERGUSON, The Antlantic, 2013).

Its helps you develop the habits and skills of citizenship. These skills are deliberation, debate, cooperation,

“In Baston v. Kentucky decided in April 1986, the court ruled that’s prosecutors could be required to provide a race neutral explanation when their use of peremptory challenges to strike black potential jurors raised an inference of discrimination” (Linda Greenhouse, 2015). An example shows that in a criminal case in Floyd County, Ga, the prosecution struck all the black potential jurors. One woman was struck because she was told her “age” was too close to the defendant. She was 34 and the defendant was 19. Another juror was struck because his son was convicted of stealing hubcaps from a

Juries should be representative of the community by being selected from a group that is a fair section of their community. Some benefits will be that juries that include a community’s life experiences such as social, economic and political perspectives are better at fact finding and incorporating community values. But some countries show different patterns of representativeness due to jury eligibly. Differences in English language ability or citizenship explains the apparent underrepresentation of Hispanic or Asian groups in some New York counties. We should try to have fully representative juries that can help jurors benefit from diverse experiences and