“One of the jurors voted a question mark, and the lawyer just had that thousand-yard stare. He looked like he was about to cry when we reached a positive verdict because people choose empathy over logic.”

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Also grabbed responses from these threads: 1 and 2. 

Note: The following content has mentions of child abuse, sexual harassment, and domestic violence. Reader discretion is advised. 

"It felt like a scene from The Shining. We had to take a quick recess because one of the jurors ran to the bathroom to vomit. As a civil case, we had to decide if the doctor had followed the standard of care (lots of testimony about that) or had acted recklessly. It was ridiculous. The only reason the guy was alive was because the doctor spent 10 hours relentlessly replacing and repairing the arteries the guy had damaged by smoking for 50 years. Yeah, I'm sure it sucked to wake up paralyzed, but he would have been dead in the hands of any lesser surgeon. It took us longer to pick a foreperson than to find that the doctor DID follow the standard of care (and more) and absolve him of any liability. But I'll never forget the pictures of that operating room. Holy shit." 

"We tried the case and spent nearly an hour in closing arguments detailing the concept of proximate cause, explaining that the guys chasing the dead driver did not have to be THE sole proximate cause of the accident to share responsibility for the accident. They just had to be a contributing factor to the accident to share some portion of the liability.

We asked for $3 million for each family. The jury deliberated for hours, and like a scene from a movie, the jury came back with a question for the judge: "Can we award more than the Plaintiffs asked for?" The judge answered yes. A few more hours passed, and the jury came back with a verdict.The jury awarded $6 million to each family. But they awarded the damages against the dead driver alone, letting the chasers off of the hook. The jury looked very pleased with themselves, and they looked surprised when the families didn't look pleased with the verdict.In the hallway after the trial, one of the jurors sought me out for an explanation. He asked me how much the families would get after lawyers' fees. I told him "zero" and explained that the dead driver had no insurance and no assets as I watched the blood drain from his face. He looked mortified and started apologizing. Talking it through with him, it became clear that the jury didn't understand why we had sued the chasers in the first place because they didn't hit our clients' car. They had no idea what we were talking about when we did our detailed explanation of proximate cause.That is when I learned that jury instructions are essentially meaningless." 

"Funny thing is, he probably wouldn't have been picked anyway. Also, they filled the jury less than 10 minutes later, and we all got to go. Most of us waved at him on our way out. He was fuming!"

"I was disappointed because I thought at the time it was a waste of our time. I found the trial very interesting. The guy claimed to be a church and was donating all his earnings to support his 'church,' which was his family home."  

"His equally sleazy son tried to take over and run things, but he didn't have dad's charisma, and the cult splintered. Eventually, the son sold the building, took the money, and moved to Thailand (a notorious hub for child sex trafficking at the time) to "minister."

"This poor kid had been forced to relive probably the worst moment of his life in front of fourteen strangers in the jury box, in front of the "man" (barely 20) who'd murdered his friend, and a courtroom of observers, over the course of years. No wonder he'd cussed at the judge. That was 2019 (the murder was in 2015). I hope he's found peace."

"All three of us were surprised to be seated on the jury. The criminal case: police raid of a drug dealer's house. There was a woman "visiting" the girlfriend; she was in the bathroom when the police raid busted through the door. The drug dealer rushed into the bathroom to flush drugs down the toilet. The prosecutor claimed since the woman was in the bathroom at the time of the drugs getting flushed and the bathroom door was shut, she was also in possession of the drugs. The drug dealer testified she had nothing to do with the drugs. They had no other evidence, just that she was there and in the bathroom. We found her not guilty. We asked the judge why this was even brought to trial. She said she had no idea." 

"The defense lost me when the prosecution hauled out their evidence that this guy was also scamming people, stealing mail and had been dealing meth. They found meth in his car during his arrest, and it was all packaged up like he was selling it. He told the cops the drugs weren't his; he was just "delivering it" to people who'd bought it. They also found a bunch of other people's mail in his car, and during the questioning, he admitted to running scams and was "having second thoughts, so was trying to get the scam letters back."

For some reason this guy wanted to testify, and during the prosecution's questioning, he actually admitted that he was selling the meth and that he was "the most reliable dealer in town." I'm assuming he thought this was an admirable trait that would paint him in a good light?Despite the guy literally admitting to several of these charges and the mountain of evidence, there were still five people who wanted to vote "Not Guilty." We also almost had a mistrial because some lady on the jury snuck her phone into deliberation and was texting people. Luckily the judge deemed it wasn't about the case, and we ended up using an alternate juror.Eventually we were able to get a guilty verdict, but one guy was dead set against basically nullifying because he didn't think selling drugs should be a crime. The funny thing was, everyone was in agreement that "fuck porch pirates," and it took us a minute all to agree that he was guilty on that." — anonymous

"He was facing real jail time for assault over all this, and most of the jury just wanted to convict right away on the basis of a guy overpowering a woman. The prosecutor had argued that he was just supposed to abandon his car with her in it and find a different way to work.

However, it also came up that by the law he was allowed to remove her from the car as long as he did so using the minimum amount of necessary force. I argued with the other jurors that there was no way we had been shown beyond a reasonable doubt that he had used excessive force. Her injuries were from falling, and just because she fell does not mean he was excessive. It lasted about an hour, but eventually everyone came around, and we ruled not guilty. It was a good day." 

"As I and the other jurors were leaving (it didn't take us long to decide), the victim and their parents happened to still be in the common area, standing in a little group. They looked just... shattered, the kid having had to relive the whole thing and knowing there was more of that to come in the pursuit of justice, the parents seeming unsure how to be comforting or carry themselves and also traumatized, not yet having been informed of our decision. I probably knew more about what abuse had occurred than the parents did. I badly wanted to say something, but there was nothing to say, and while I left that wretched tableau, it did not leave me. I hope they're doing better now. It wasn't possible for me to follow their case, since I wasn't involved with it once it was approved and the age of the victim meant it wasn't public. I wouldn't say it still affects me really, but it isn't a nice memory, and I'll never know how it turned out for them."

"Plaintiff wanted me on the jury because they thought I'd focus on the "eggshell plaintiff" rule; defense wanted me on because they knew that I'd look at it logically. We ended up finding for the defendant because it just wasn't physically possible for a bumper tap to cause the injuries he was claiming. The street sweeper accident was the reason, not the bumper tap. What surprised me the most was the process of deliberation. You're not supposed to consider anything other than the evidence presented at trial, but everyone else pretty much ignored that. My favorite moment of it was someone saying, "My sister has fibromyalgia, and it doesn't work like that." It was really fascinating as a baby lawyer to see how the sausage is actually made."

"The alarms are set to trigger at the value they are set for so they are not constantly going off, but when there is an issue, no one did anything wrong; it is just a bad situation that happens. The one thing that could be implemented is by the device manufacturer to have an alarm looking for the longer-term trend, but..."

"She asked the jury to give her husband and her kids' father the justice he deserved for being randomly shot. There was a video of the whole event. Still took weeks. UM got off, but holy shit, it was close. That guy pulled up to a gas pump and had his life ruined."