CA Jury Duty

dietz199
Mon, 11 Feb 2019 18:26:39 +0000

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.