How have parents dealt with their students being called for jury duty in their home town? S2 is in San Diego and we’re in the SF Bay area. His jury summons happens to match spring break. But if he actually sat on a long case that would be pretty disruptive to his studies. They give an option of extending out six months. But then that would just put him back in here for jury duty in the fall term. We were lucky with S1 where they just dismissed his group without needing to go to the city hall.
What my kids have done is if they will be home or available during the summer, they’ve changed the date to the beginning of the summer break. If they were going to stay at their campus over the summer, they wrote on the form that they were attending X university and would not be returning to San Diego in the next year, including the summer, except for quick breaks, and gave their college apt/dorm address as proof. The court was very understanding and helpful, and always dismissed them from service in those cases. That said, when I had jury duty on Jan 3, there were a ton of college-aged people in the jury lounge. The court was selecting jurors for two long-term trials (a 4-week one and another for 8-weeks). Anyone who couldn’t commit to that long of a trial, wrote an explanation on a form and they were all dismissed by 10 a.m.
Our California county allows full time students to serve during school breaks.
In our state, you get to pick three dates when you will be available. Do you have the option of choosing a summer date?
I believe that you can put down a break date as your “starting availability.” Then if you are called, you go, and you tell them that you are only available for this particular week (or 2 weeks). Usually people get called for one day and dismissed, and you get to have your “certificate” of service. This is what my son did.
Since summons is on spring break, S should show up. CA has one day-one trial jury service, meaning you show up and get assigned to a case or you’re done for year. My S was called recently. There were no trials starting that day and he was sent home. If your S gets picked, judge usually gives prospective jurors overview of case (what’s it about, length, etc). My experience was judge then tells people to stay if they have some hardship to explain (eg financial, child care, school, planned vacation, etc). The rest are sent home and told to come back tomorrow. There are other cases besides long ones. I was on case earlier this year, reported for jury service on Monday. It was a civil case, trial started on Tuesday, we were handed case on Friday AM, verdict delivered late Friday afternoon.
CA D just served hers Thanksgiving week. In the past for our others, we were able to say that kid didn’t live locally, send it back and be done, but this one actually does. And it seemed new that they asked for a specific break date to be sent back. She had received a notice to serve in August or Sept (when school had started) and replied the Thanksgiving week as the first break she had that she could serve. She was hoping they would call her then versus winter break or spring break (during senior year) just before graduation. She didn’t get called in on Monday. When we checked her number for Tuesday (good thing we did!) her number was in the range, so she showed up. When everyone from the pool (many many people) were put in the large room, the first thing the judge asked was if there were students in the room and three raised their hands. She had them come up, asked them where they attended, made some nice small talk, thanked them for showing up, and sent them home.
Point is, they won’t be asked to sit on a long jury, they get that is a hardship for students, and it is nice if you can give a date that you know works, so they can get the check mark it is done for that year and typically longer. At least that’s how it worked for my CA D.
My son was attending SLO and we lived in the Bay Area when he got a jury duty summons from our bay area jury duty office. I checked the “lives out of county” box and mailed it back to them (he asked me to do so). He had internships during summer (out of state) and it was unknown what days he would be home during break/summer.
^^^That’s what we did for ours that were in college at the other end of the state. @patertrium is that still a box to check on the current summons? For some reason I don’t remember seeing it on the most recent one, but I may have just missed it because my D was local anyway. But I do seem to remember the choices/format being somewhat different than what I had seen on ones received the last 3-5 years.
Kid got summons in King Couty WA when she was in school in MA. She called, and the very nice lady she talked to said that college out of state was not an excuse but she could postpone it to her winter break, and that the judges would not put her on a long case. Surely enough, she ended up on a criminal jury - some small potatoes burglary. She was done in 2 days. IMO, bigger courts know the issues college students face…
We do the same as @MLM for our dd who lives in SF but has our permanent address in San Diego. We check off the box that she doesn’t live in the county.
In Fl., I had to write a letter to get my son excused.
Meanwhile, I just got served. If I was 70, I could be dismissed automatically. I’m self employed, and I,don’t want to miss work time. Plus, you have to call in daily to see if needed. If I was retired, I wouldn’t mind the experience.
This happened several times while our kiddies were in college. I blacked out the bar code on the envelope and wrote - "currently not residing at this address, return to sender’. That was the end of it.
Neither kiddle ever made one of the college addresses their legal address. They kept bank accounts, auto registration (cleared thru our insurance agent), tax stuff etc under their home address. This was because both of the college towns were known for being absolutely - um - let’s say ‘inflexible’ when it came to jury duty summons. Some students had their course and finals schedules impacted, no leniency. So clearly things differ by county.
A couple of side notes. When the first summons came for one of the kids I actually went to the court house to see what could be done. A bailiff clearly and without ambiguity stated ‘just throw it away’. Um, no…couldn’t do that.
On the final note, S, who now lives at our house, was summoned for duty. Our county does the ‘call in the evening’ system. Sometimes you’re told to call back at noon the next day and be prepared to show up in 2 hours. He did this, he was called, he was seated. It was a great experience and the defendant had someone who was mentally present and able to really do the job required.
The whole thing about forcing students into jury duty during their academic years seems punitive and questionable. How willing and able is someone who is forced to drop their studies, miss finals, or in other ways winds up punished by the system going to be when it comes to judging fairly. The system also teaches students to lie if and when they are pulled up for possible empanelment.
A venture company needs to change the jury duty process. Very inefficient.
When my daughter was summoned I called and told them she was not living at our address anymore, and provided her campus apartment address (3 hours away). They excused her from local jury service, but sent her a summons for federal grand jury service in Los Angeles, 2 hours from her campus (during the school year). She did not respond to the summons, and moved out of her campus apartment before the reporting date. She has not received another summons since, and that was about 4 years ago.
In my 27 years in California I have received a summons about every 2 years, got called in for jury duty about every four years and seated on a panel three times. Each time the judge asked whether any full-time students were present and excused them right away. The judge and attorneys do not want unwilling jurors on the panel, unless a student really wants an opportunity to serve as a juror it should be possible to get excused.
These were two different entities, so ‘they’ didn’t send her a second summons. Federal jury service is different than state, and yes, a federal court can be 10-15 hours away (think Montana or Alaska where your federal district can be a long distance). You cannot just ignore the summons even if you are in college. The court will reimburse you for travel.
@websensation You’re probably right. Better targeting would be more efficient for all concerned. There’s got to be a better algorithm for this. Although I have been enjoying the inefficiency of getting the letter and then not needing to even go into city hall and the one time I went 10 years ago I was dismissed after a couple of hours in the waiting room. The only case I actually had to serve as a juror was in the 80s!
True, it was just an uncanny coincidence that the federal summons followed so quickly after the local summons was excused.
This just happened to DS17 last week.We live in Georgia. I called because he is in school OOS. They said to fill out the back have it notarized, said I could sign stating I was his mom, and fill in when he will graduate(over 2 years from now)., scan in a copy of the form and a copy of his schedule and email it to them. That’s what I did. Later that day they emailed and said he was excused from jury duty for the next couple of years… Pretty simple.
I am in Ca so I will share my experience. Your S has two options. 1. Appear on his date or most likely call in and he might get lucky and not have to go in. If he has to go in if the trial is long the judge will excuse or postpone him to another time. Pick a date later within the 6 months when he would be available to serve.
Last December I had post my jury service to the week after Christmas thinking that I would call each night but not have to appear. My thought was that no new trials would be starting. Much to my surprise I had to appear the first day. We had had a large fire and the courts had been closed and had a backlog of cases so they were starting jury selection for a trial that had been postponed. In my group were probably 50 college students. I bet most had postponed their service to break time and like me figured they would have to come in. The trial ended up being a case that was predicted to last several months. Anyone who could not serve that long was asked to state their case. For every student he asked when they would be back and postponed them to that date. For those who said they no longer lived here but were just visiting he told them they needed to contact the court and have themselves removed from the jury rolls. He explained that even though it’s inconvenient for students and young people with jobs that don’t pay for jury service to serve defendants are entitled to a jury of peers. That means all ages. The judge also said that most trials only last a few days and most students can find a time to complete their civic duty.