I wasn't sure about the Jury Experiences web site early on, but I've become a fan.
"What really happens in jury rooms"
The site itself as evolved as much as my perception of it has. It was designed as, and still hopes to be, a forum, where jurors would post descriptions of their own jury experiences. When he started the site back in late 2006, founder Jonathan wrote:
Many of us serve on juries. Our experiences are often both extremely interesting and much different from what we expected. We emerge from our service with stories that we share with our families and friends. However, with the exception of notorious trials, and rare cases in which ex-jurors are interviewed for research purposes, most of these stories are eventually lost.
The Internet provides an ideal medium for collecting and discussing our experiences. While there are numerous jury-related Web sites and, increasingly, blogs where individuals write about their jury service, few if any of these sites provide an open forum where ex-jurors and other interested people can discuss their experiences and exchange ideas.
Jury Experiences is an attempt to create such a forum. By facilitating discussion about what really happens in jury rooms, court rooms and the jury selection process, in various courts and jurisdictions and especially from the juror's perspective, I hope to contribute to better understanding of our government and legal system by the public and legal specialists alike.
He was right about all that, and even "primed the pump" with a thoughtful description of his own jury experience -- but for the most part, jurors have not yet joined the forum.
Go for the forum, stay for the news feed
Maybe jurors simply prefer to describe their jury duty on their own blogs, which we know they regularly do. Because of what Jonathan's quiet forum has become, hundreds of those jury duty posts can be found in one place at Jury Experiences. As he waited for the jurors to come, he started a news feed, and it's extraordinary. My own feed settings pick up dozens of juror blog posts a week, but Jury Experiences finds so many more that I've stopped looking for them on my own. When a colleague and I were researching juror stress for my Japan trip, we found examples of every kind in Jury Experiences' archives. On top of that, Jonathan gathers regular news stories, usually several a day, about all aspects of juries and jury service.
There's so little of Jonathan's own voice on the site that it's easy to mistake it for a splog, or worse, a front for the kind of extreme politics that sometimes attaches itself to the idea of the jury. I'm now convinced it's neither, and it's become a go-to resource when I want to know what jurors -- at least the ones who write on line -- really think.
