I did jury duty once. It costs me several hundred dollars in pay, since I'm not one of those people who gets reimbursed by their employer(government workers mostly.)

My fellow jury members and I were very annoyed at what were were not allowed to know. We would have been happy if they had provided a basic dictionary to use, since we were called upon to convict someone without understanding what the charges meant.

I was personally annoyed at the attempts of some of the jury members to play CSI or be Monk from the TV show. They kept making up conspiracies to get out of convicting an obviously guilty man. "What if the victim was a member of a rival gang, and she accusing him as retribution?" As if there are tons of middle aged, professionally employed, white women in Latino gangs.

Hint to you young men and women who are going to commit crimes or get arrested in the future. Find one story and then stick to it. A jury is going to find you guilty once they hear you offer 6 different version of what happened while being interviewed by the police. Remember that the jury has access to those tapes.