I sat on several juries. If you serve on a jury, one of the most interesting things to do is hang around afterwards. The lawyers want to hear from you as to what swayed you and you get to hear about all the stuff that was kept out of the trial.
The biggest was a strong-arm robbery, where the victim didn't speak English but searched out and found a Good Samaritan and they flagged down a cop. The cop took them and cruised around - the perps were still hanging out in the area. The defense's main strategy seemed to be to try to slip in that the victim wasn't here legally, he kept getting objected to. The defendant had a very distinctive appearance and was still wearing the clothes the victim described to the policeman, so we weren't worried about a mis-identification. We found the defendant guilty and afterwards, we heard this was his third time, which in Texas meant a really long sentence. Felt good about our findings.
I sat on a civil trial where a housing developer got ripped off by a contractor who graded the streets wrong and so put the sewer openings in the wrong place. The Developer then hired Contractor #2 and told him to do what it takes to fix it, so he did. Contractor #2 was suing the Developer as the Developer never paid and Contractor #2 lost his entire business as a result.
The Developer claimed Contractor #2 was lying and didn't do any meaningful work. We found for Contractor #2, awarded the full amount plus attorney's fees.
We found out after the trial that there had already been a trial where the Developer sued the first contractor's insurance company and had already been paid the full amount but wanted to keep the money for himself. The kicker was that the star witness in that other trial was Contractor #2, who the Developer was now calling a liar. Felt really good about what we did.
I sat on a drunk driving trial. The defendant was a motorcyclist that was driving fast and recklessly. Halfway through the trial, there was testimony that the senior cop said to the junior, "He's not drunk, he's just stupid". The trial stopped, we were shuttled out, and about half an our later, we were dismissed, all we heard was that "there was a problem with the evidence". I'm sure the problem was that the police didn't think the driver was drunk.
The other one I sat through was a civil trial where a lady claimed to have slipped on a wet spot at a grocery store. She had done the whole chiropractor/back brace thing and was claiming she was still in great pain. She claimed that she slipped, did a forward flip and landed on her bottom. To be kind, this lady was not built like a gymnast, so we didn't believe her story and gave her nothing.
Afterwards, in talking with the defense attorney, he thought we would put great weight on a fraudulent unemployment claim she had made, but for me, it never got that far, her story was physically impossible for her to have achieved. It also came out that the store had offered to take care of the hospital bill on the day of the "fall", but she didn't want that, seems she was hunting a payday from the start. Again felt like we got it right.
I always found the experience interesting and certainly very different from our normal routine. I encourage folks to take part.