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Jury Duty

Jury Duty

Date: Mar 06 2003

Intro

1. Learn Vocabulary - Learn some new vocabulary before you start the lesson.

2. Read and Prepare - Read the introduction and prepare to hear the audio.

One of the most important parts of the U.S. government is the judicial system. The U.S. Constitution states that any person accused of a crime has the right to a trial by jury. The jury is made up of the accused person’s peers. In order to get a group of peers together for a trial, the government asks U.S. citizens to serve jury duty.
Migs was recently selected for jury duty and spent two weeks in court. Read on to learn about his experience.

Dialog

1. Study - Read the dialog again to see how the vocab words are used.

Jury Selection
I learned about jury duty when I got mail from the court asking me to report. I went to the courthouse and went through a short interview in the courtroom. The judge and lawyers chose me as one of twelve jurors for the case.
Trial
The defendants in the trial were accused of embezzlement. The lawyers started with opening statements, and then me and the other 11 jurors listened to testimony from many different witnesses. We saw a lot of evidence and heard lots of arguments between the lawyers. At the end of the trial the lawyers made closing arguments. The prosecutors tried to convince us that the accused person was guilty, and the defendant tried to convince us he was innocent.
Deliberation
After the trial ended, the judge asked the jurors to decide if the accused was guilty or innocent. We went into a special room and talked about the case for about 12 hours. Most of us thought he was innocent, but a couple people thought he was guilty. After arguing back and forth, 10 of us decided that we would submit a verdict of innocent. (We only needed 9 jurors to agree on the decision.)
Outcome
Once we made our decision, we returned to the courtroom. We gave our decision to the judge and he read it to everyone. The defendants were very happy with our decision. The prosecutors were not. I felt good because I knew that justice had been done.

 

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Discussion

Jury duty sounds quite interesting. I have been hoping I wouldn’t get selected for a long time, but after hearing what Migs has to say about it, it doesn’t seem so bad. When I get something in the mail from the court I will definitely be excited to have the opportunity to be a juror. It’s an important part of being an American.
Have a great week,
John

 

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