I have old Facebook and Twitter accounts, maybe some others. I’m old so there’s a MySpace account out there. But I’ve mostly been using reddit the last decade or so, and have migrated to Lemmy. Now, Lemmy is the only social media i use. Recent news got me thinking about this question.
Good answers here, but ignoring probably the most realistic and practical truth of the matter in my opinion.
You won’t immediately be sent to the stocks for saying “I don’t want to answer”, the worst case scenario is that some officer of the court informs you that you must answer the question even if you don’t want to. And even that is only going to happen if the attorney asking the question insists. And I struggle to imagine a situation where a competent attorney would do so.
Being hostile towards your prospective jurors, making them feel exposed and uncomfortable, is not a way to march to victory in a trial. They want to ensure you aren’t prejudiced against their client/case. Making you dislike them personally IS prejudice. Causing prejudice is a bad way to eliminate prejudice.
They will ask questions, mostly yes/no ones, that you need to answer honestly. They may ask for clarification. If you don’t want to answer and say so, it’s unlikely anyone will press you because that unnwillingness to answer is just as clear an indication of who you are as anything else.
I laughed and now people are staring at me.
This is really helpful, thanks.
This seems correct. A judge (generally, without looking into all local rules) could technically rule that you are compelled to answer, and then continuing to refuse could lead to a contempt of court charge.
But the whole point of the process is to find a suitable juror, so if interacting with a potential juror is like pulling teeth in voir dire, the most practical solution seems to be dismissal by the judge so everyone can move along.