I'm one who enjoys it as an entertaining and educational diversion. Is there a fairer way to deal with people accused of crimes? How about secret military tribunals? Its a small way that a car-free perspective can be injected into these decisions. You also get to represent intentionally car free people as decent citizens to the judge and attorneys. I've never been on a case where car-free
was an issue but the assistant DA was impressed when the car-free guy showed up in a snowstorm while some of the car-dependent assumed the court would be closed and didn't even bother to call. The car-free juror also showed up on time when the car-dependent sometimes had the "traffic" excuse for being late.
I said
most people don't enjoy jury duty and I stand by that. I don't agree with trying to get out of it, but you don't have to pretend to be heart-broken if you do get out of it.
I enjoyed one stint of jury duty that involved a federal civil case--a truck driver who was hit by a train. I found the expert testimony to be very interesting, as transportaion is one of my interests. (I love trains, planes, trucks and automobiles--and especially bicycles.) I was the lone holdout on the jury. I thought the dead truck driver's family should have gotten more compensation than the other jurors wanted. Federal civil cases evidently allow one vote short of unanimous, so I didn't cause a hung jury. Who knows--maybe my carfree perspective made me think differently about the case, but I really don't think so.