melannen: Commander Valentine of Alpha Squad Seven, a red-haired female Nick Fury in space, smoking contemplatively (Default)
melannen ([personal profile] melannen) wrote 2022-03-11 03:28 am (UTC)

Yeah, the US has those kinds of juries too, those are sometimes called Petit Juries here to distinguish from Grand Juries, but Petit Juries are much more common and you're much more likely to end up on one - getting called to a federal grand jury was like a 1 in several thousand chance.

I was a near miss for ending up on a petit jury for a mass shooter trial just before Covid, but thankfully the defendant decided to plead guilty, that would not have been good either. There are a lot of judge-only trials though, they may be more common than jury for some crimes - defendants can request one if they want, they tend to go a lot faster, and I think a lot of times either the defense lawyers convinces the defendants they're better off with a judge, or the prosecutors do deal-making where they agree to drop certain charges in exchange for the defendant doing a quick non-jury trial for the others.

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