I remember reading an article not that long ago that talks about how people who have libertarian political views tend to be rejected for jury duty as libertarians have anti authoritarian stances.
Furthermore I’ve also heard that a libertarian must state that he or she is libertarian as soon as possible other wise the person risks getting in legal trouble if the person gets selected to be a juror.F*ck jury duty!
Are Libertarians actually disqualified from jury duty?
They are looking for people who don't have biases that would conflict with the case. Not sure just someone "being libertarian" would be enough to disqualify someone from sitting on a particular trial. I've been on jury duty several times and I've never seen anyone excused for any political philosophy.
Last time I was on jury duty, for example, there was a prospective juror being questioned by the lawyers on each side. She said she loves all of the TV crime shows. When they asked her which ones, she named off several. She was excused from that trial because they felt she might have pre-conceived ideas that might interfere with her interpretation of that case.
I doubt a Libertarian would be automatically excluded from jury duty, but I wouldn't be surprised if both the prosecutor and defendant attorneys would each use a peremptory challenge, for different reasons.
Libertarian philosophy is for minimal government, and the prosecutor may not want a juror who doesn't the prosecutor's job as a legitimate one.
Libertarian philosophy also expects an individual to be responsible for their own actions, and the defender may not want a juror who would have a hard time supporting a defense where someone else may have committed the crime.
You don’t have to declare anything other than the questions asked of you and no, they aren’t automatically disqualified. But it makes sense that the prosecution might want to dismiss jurors with strong libertarian views. They are anti-authoritarian as you mentioned, distrust the government, and value personal freedom over social order.
Not automatically, they go through a process of figuring out if someone has strong opinions by asking a series of questions. So if you have a strong opinion in relation to the case you're likely to be dismissed. They'd prefer people who are more in the middle so it's as unbias as possible.
I'm not sure how seriously answers to those questionnaires are actually taken, considering one of the most high profile trials of the last decade let multiple partisans with their minds already made up and published on their social medias sit as jury members.
I could definitely see how Anarchist rather than libertarian tendencies would be seen as a problem in selecting jury members though.
Never hear that before. I'm not a Libertarian, but I'm glad I never actually got jury duty. Because it would probably cause my analytical thinking, critical thinking and logical thinking to overtake my emotions. So they might as well have Spock or a robot on the jury.
I've been tagged for being a juror for two courts-martial. I can't remember the first case. During the second it was a case of child abuse. In both cases we weren't asked about anything. Our orders were to be unbiased and objective.
