EmployeeScreenIQ Blog

I’ve heard of people lying to get OUT of jury duty.  But lying to get IN?  Not too smart, considering who they were lying to.  Who would have thought a court where criminal record information is kept would find out about the criminal records of those serving on one of their juries?

Potential jurors lied about criminal past

BY ERIN L. NISSLEY, STAFF WRITER - The Times Tribune                               

November 19, 2008

A jury trial ended in a mistrial before it began Tuesday when a prosecutor discovered three jurors lied about their criminal records.

All three were chosen Monday, along with 11 others, for the trial of a Scranton man on drug and gun charges. As part of the selection process, potential jurors must fill out a questionnaire that asks, among other things, if they have ever been arrested and if they have ever been convicted of a crime.

All 14 jurors — 12 plus two alternates — answered they had not. But a background check, which is routinely conducted on jurors selected in a criminal case, revealed three had criminal records, Deputy District Attorney Margaret Bisignani said.

Ms. Bisignani reported her discovery to Judge Vito Geroulo on Tuesday morning.

“In my 36 years (in the legal profession), I’ve never heard of anything like this,” he said, joking that jurors more often lie to avoid jury service.

If only one or two of the jurors had lied about their criminal history, the case against defendant Larry Moore, 23, could have gone forward because there still would have been 12 people left on the jury, Judge Geroulo explained.

Ms. Bisignani said if the information had not been discovered, any conviction would be automatically overturned.

“A person is ineligible to serve as a juror if they have a conviction of a crime punishable by more than one year in prison,” she said.

A new jury will be picked this morning, and the case will go forward, Ms. Bisignani said.

The three jurors’ names were not released Tuesday; it’s unclear whether they will face charges. Judge Geroulo said that decision would be up to District Attorney Andy Jarbola, but he felt so strongly about the situation that he called the jurors into the courtroom Tuesday to explain why they were being sent home.

“It interferes with the court’s ability to do business,” the judge said. “The goal is to get fair and impartial jurors. That didn’t happen here.”

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Dr. Seuss famously wrote “From there to here, and here to there, funny things are everywhere.”  This is especially true in our industry as we run across a number of stories that border on the ridiculous.  In an effort to instill some humor into the lives of our readers, we are beginning a new series called “Stories of the Absurd.”  Through this series, we will share these tales with you with hopes that they will make you laugh and be thankful it didn’t happen to you!

Though I cannot prove the veracity of this story published in the Notes & Footnotes section of The Berkshire Eagle, I thought I would share it with our readers as it’s pretty entertaining.  True or not, you’re bound to crack a smile when you think of what must have been going through the job seeker’s head…

Purge of records yields gem

By D.R. Bahlman – Tuesday, November 11, 2008

WILLIAMSTOWN

Every so often, when storage space gets tight, the firm conducts a purge of its records. Age-old bank statements and other commercial debris go into the “bin” without a second glance, but some shredder-bound items stop the reviewers dead in their tracks, if only for a minute or two.

Usually, this ends with a slow pitch to the “out” pile, but sometimes a document wins a reprieve.

So it was the other day when the CEO, ankle-deep in (mostly) waste paper, ran across a letter of reference written for him more than 30 years ago by a professor of English at a small college in northern New England.

An occasional player of practical jokes, the professor wrote two different letters — one that he sent to the prospective employer and the other that he presented to his student without informing him that the two letters were not identical.

“It has been my privilege to observe this young man’s creative and resourceful efforts to avoid anything resembling hard work,” the missive read. ” … Also remarkable is his unceasing and single-minded dedication to assuring the continued profitability of bars and taverns. … Were I an employer, I would not hesitate to hire him, although I would be wary of placing him in any position that brings him into close proximity of the till.”

The reading of the letter was followed by a moment of silence as the open-mouthed job-seeker contemplated the terrible possibility that it may have been mailed, and it was only after the student appeared to have regained the power of speech that the professor would (pro) fess up.

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