CA Jury Duty

mom60
Thu, 21 Feb 2019 21:07:33 +0000

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.