How to get out of jury duty?

[Setec Astronomy]

Now it gets interesting. Even after agreeing that he tried to kill the woman, several of the jury members had a real difficulty in sentencing him to any time in jail! They wanted probation. After all, jail is harsh! This part stumped several of us :nixweiss

I had similar experiences. Two huge guys slugged and stomped a little guy, hole in his head, etc. then robbed him. In NJ, there is assault and aggravated assault, aggravated being if the victim's life was in danger, or if he even thought his life was in danger. The defense was ridiculous, that this little guy had come up to the two big guys and sexually propositioned one of them and grabbed his crotch (this was on the sidewalk a few doors down from the guy's house where he lived with his parents), so they beat him up and robbed him as an afterthought. There were witnesses who corroborated the victim's account (that the defendants crossed the street to knock him down and rob him).



Anyway, we get into the deliberation room, and although everyone agreed the defendants were guilty, we had several who had trouble going for the aggravated vs. simple assault. This is after seeing the emergency room pictures, the report about the broken ribs, and oh yeah--the picture of the hole in the guy's head! I can't comment about the sentence since in NJ the judge does that and the jury is dismissed as soon as they render a verdict.