I've never been on a grand jury, but while I was practicing law, I got selected to be on two criminal juries, for one of which I was the foreman. In that one, we convicted the defendant on, interestingly enough given my background, an I-12 drug trafficking/mule case. I had to sweat and sit with 63 pounds of marijuana in the room. I found it to be fascinating stuff. The notions that some otherwise highly educated people have in the jury room about the case was something to behold. I spent half my time saying that what a juror thought that they saw during the trial didn't really happen that way and trying to keep everyone focused on the facts. What some people noticed during the trial was downright frightening to me. I used to use that experience with my estate planning clients, most of whom were well heeled financially, that they had no peers down at the courthouse, so it was far better to stay out of the newspaper and out of court than ot litigate with one another.
The other case never went to verdict because a plea deal was reached on a lesser charge after the jury had been impaneled. That case was fascinating too because the defendant robbed a convenience store with a squirt gun. The primary charge was armed robbery. They pled to a robbery charge, which had very little jail time in the local jail, whereas the armed robbery charge in which the penalty if convicted was ten years at hard labor in a state penitentiary. .
