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Tarheel

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4 hours ago, MyOwn said:

 

Beautiful @dwilawyer Thanks man. So Federal criminal cases generally don't got to trial? or is this only in Texas? If it's across the board for all not to go to trial, Why? Settling before Jury / Trial ?

Most criminal cases in Federal Court don't go to trial anymore because of the inherent penalties of going to trial in that system and losing. But if you are set for jury selection in potential criminal cases coming up I don't want to say too much so as poison your thinking one way or the other. Hopefully you will get selected, I think we have had three on here get selected and share their experiences. You can tell us about the experience. A Federal criminal trial would be very interesting (unless it is a DUI/DWI on a Federal enclave or in a National Park). 

 

Next to military service, jury service is one of the highest callings a citizen can perform.

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3 hours ago, MyOwn said:

Huh?

[very rare for a criminal case to go to trial in Federal Court]

 

The number of Federal Criminal trials has declined 70% from when I started, 60% from 1998.

 

There are about 80,000 Federal cases filed annually, 90% are plead out pursuant to some form of plea bargain, 8% are dismissed, and about 2% go to trial. That's 1,500 or so, for the entire country. Some of those choose to waive a jury and have their case heard by a judge instead of a jury. There are about 600 to 800 jury trials a year for the whole nation in Federal Courts. Those break down into four general areas, Immigration Penalty cases, drugs, property, and violent crimes. There are about 3,000 violent Federal cases each year, of the 80,000 and about 7% of those go to trial. There were about 25,000 immigration cases in FY '18 and less than 1% of those went to trial, less than 100.

 

In Texas, the State system, about 9/10ths of 1% have their cases resolved by jury trial. New York it's about 4%, Michigan a little over 2%, in California it is a bit above 1%.

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12 hours ago, richieb said:


Two things here - 

- he is much better looking than Carl

- he has Much more hair than Carl. In fact he actually Has hair - 

Yea but I don't know him. I know Carl, distinguished Gentleman. And a good judge of bad whiskey.

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13 hours ago, babadono said:

Yea but I don't know him. I know Carl, distinguished Gentleman. And a good judge of bad whiskey.

Too cold for slushie now.  Bad whiskey is what I would drink if I had any.  I'll have to settle for allocated bourbon tonight. 

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I’ve had jury duty several times and gotten as far as voir dire, but I was always excused.  Trial attorneys are afraid to have an attorney on their jury.  Once the defense counsel in a OUIL case asked me if I’d prosecuted drunk drinking cases.  I replied, “many.”  He the asked if I won them all.  I replied, “of course not.”  He then. asked if I felt the juries had made mistakes.  I said, “not necessarily.”  He then excused me.

 

He incorrectly assumed I would favor the prosecution.  He failed to understand that I could easily vote for acquittal if the prosecutor failed to sustain the state’s high burden of proof, even if I felt the defendant were guilty.  Being guilty and being proven guilty are not the same thing.

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