Lots of jury summons, almost always told the evening before and morning of (on the court web site) that no jurors are needed for that day’s morning and afternoon sessions. Presumably, that is because jury summons are sent well in advance, and court scheduling may be changed between the day the summons is sent and the day the jurors may be called.
I’ve been called three times but got out of it because I was a teacher and/or I had a minor dependent.
My H’s boss got called for a grand jury trial and he was out for quite a while. He was made jury foreman. When you have some education and a stable job, if they can nab you, they will.
@livinginLA : Despite your user name, that cannot possibly have been in California unless you are talking about an incident from over 20 years ago.
@AboutTheSame you are correct it was not in California.
When I was selected to serve on a jury…I had a six month old baby, and a four year old…AND I was a teacher. I was NOT excused. In fact the judge made it very clear that neither of those things was a reason for being excused from jury duty in his court.
He told all of us…the only person excused from serving is the governor.
Now of course…during the jury selection, folks did get excused due to conflict of interest things.
@thumper1, ouch. I’ve been lucky I guess. In NJ there is a space on the summons form that allows you to request deferral if you are a teacher or have small children There was a time about 10 years ago when I got a couple of summons in a row. Haven’t got anything recently. Of course, now that I say that…
@NJSue I could have requested a deferral to a different date…but I was NOT excused. Plus…to be honest…I didn’t want to defer and do this in the summer!
There is, of course, a difference between being excused (don’t have to serve) and postponing it to a more convenient time. I’m glad we can postpone to a more convenient time. What used to get me when I first served was seeing people get excused by the judge because they had vacation plans or something of the like. In my opinion, when you serve you should be prepared to be there a few days…not have plane tickets for tomorrow! These days I’ve noticed that judges will allow them to go back to the assembly room and reschedule their jury duty. Love this! Because now they have to come back again and they just wasted a day (a day they should have delayed to a more convenient time).
I’ve requested deferral 3 times now and have not yet been tagged. With the law of averages as it is, my luck may be running out. It would be a major pain because no one can take over my classes as I would. When I was a department chair, I dreaded faculty being called in for jury duty. It torpedoes the semester for students and finding a sub/replacement for a specific college level course at the last minute is not easy.
I know it’s our duty as citizens etc. but it’s really a pain.
My first time was in California - and it was 30 years ago. I took a day off from work and sat in a room full of people for an entire day. Noone was called. Only after did I learn that the court was a misdemeanor court and virtually all cases were only heard by a judge. Just in case a defendent decided to exercise his constitutional right to a jury of his peers we all sat around and wasted a day. I was very annoyed. I thought if somebody asked for a jury trial (I was told it was very rare) they could call in a jury and have the trial the next day.
Re: #29
That may be why they now have the call the jury duty answering machine (or check the jury duty web site more recently) the evening before to find out if you actually need to go to the court house in the morning of your jury summons day (and check in the morning to see if you actually need to go in the afternoon).
In California, they do let you reschedule to any date of your choice from six to twelve months in the future. This can allow seasonal workers (e.g. instructors in K-12 schools and colleges) to reschedule to dates when they do not have fixed work time commitments (e.g. class sessions).
I was surprised not to have been excused by either side, since I disclosed I was an attorney n the jury service form. Most times, one of the other side does NOT want an attorney to serve on the jury. When my relative was in charge of empaneling juries for the island, he didn’t excuse many people, even his wife, who had been summoned.
He qualified most of those summoned and sent them to the courtrooms where the individual judges and attorneys then conducted vour dire (further questioning). Deaf folks and those who couldn’t understand English well generally were excused. Most others had to see how things went with the courtroom they were selected for.
My county in California requires that you be available for one work week. You must check each night either on the phone or on their website to see if you must report the next day. Sometimes when you check they excuse you for the next morning but require that you check again the next late morning to see if you are required to report in the afternoon. I’ve received a jury summons 5 times, served in a one-week civil trial, and had to report and wait to be called (but never was so was sent home and released for the rest of the week) on two other occasions.
When I was summoned for jury duty a few years ago, a coworker was summoned for the same week. We ended up being in the same pool for a particular trial. The prosecutor is married to yet another coworker of ours, but this was not enough to have us disqualified. Nor was the fact that I’m a lawyer. I ended up getting disqualified, however, as did my coworker, for other reasons.
I must be due for another summons. I got the call for the Martha Stewart trial. I had to go into the city and fill out a 30 page questionnaire, but they didn’t take me. Another time I got as far as being interviewed by the lawyers, but I got rejected. It was a construction case and was an architect.
I have never been called for jury duty in any state I have lived in. I’ve always been registered to vote/had a driver’s license/whatever the basic criteria might be.
I’m also in CT, where you can be summoned and then find out the day before online or via phone whether the docket is such that you have to show up. I’ve been called maybe five or six times and had to appear three times. Twice I had to cool my heels in the very uncomfortable waiting area for hours before being told I could go, and the third time I was placed on a malpractice case against a chiropractor. It was summer, and boy they must be desperate for jurors in the summer, because I was accepted even though I disclosed during voir dire that 1) I was an attorney, 2) I personally knew one of the members of the firm representing one side, and 3) I didn’t have very high regard for chiropractic! And then the case settled literally an hour before I was to be at court.
My mother-in-law served on a murder trial that convicted the defendant. She was incredibly blase about the whole experience. I think I would have been a mess. Then there was my H’s great uncle, very old school guy who had immigrated as a teenager. He announced at a family dinner one evening that he was about to serve on a jury for a trial of a guy who “murdered his wife”. He didn’t seem to have the “innocent until proven guilty” thing quite in hand.
My H has disregarded every jury summons he has ever received and has never incurred any consequences. I have to say I wouldn’t mind a bit if the cops showed up at the house one morning and dragged him to the courthouse, though I suppose that’s not the best way to put together a responsible jury.
This is how it is in California (or at least in my county), except that we only lie fallow for 18 months before being eligible again.
OP, there’s no possible way to answer your question about how long the trial would last if your S is selected. It could be settled on the first day. It could go for months. But the judge should give prospective jurors an estimate of how long their service would be.
I just got a summons to check in the night before Aug 22, so we’ll see how it goes this time. The first time, I served on the jury; trial lasted one week. The second time, I was called in for jury selection but they picked their twelve before they got to me, and I was released.
Actually…I got to thinking. I was summoned a second time. My husband and I were both summoned within a couple of months of each other. My summons was for the day we were returning from a destination wedding. I deferred it for a couple,of months and then didn’t need to go.
Come to think of it…that was over a year ago…guess I can be called again!
I have done jury duty twice, once in Mississippi and once in Kentucky. In Mississippi it was for one or two days. All of the cases were plea bargained while we sat in the courtroom for several hours. Apparently the plea bargains don’t happen until the trial is about to start.
In Kentucky, jury duty is very different. If you are drawn for jury duty you will have duty for an entire term of court, so about two months. You will be given a calendar, and you will have to go in for 12 or 15 days, although some of those days are likely to be cancelled. I lived across the street from the prosecutor and was kinda-sorta social friends, so I was never called for jury duty (she wouldn’t have wanted me either, as prosecutors hate lawyers on juries). Strikes in Kentucky are done in secret; they go into chambers and remove the stricken jurors without telling them and then randomly draw the jury from the remaining pool.
There can be a really uncomfortable amount of emotion during the voir dire process when they start asking jurors personal questions about family members who might have been convicted of crimes or who might have been victims of crimes. I saw a number of women cry.
The jury pool that I was on was in some ways a “runaway jury,” in that it kept returning “not guilty” verdicts. Usually prosecutors win about 80 percent of their cases, and in this term the prosecutor lost about 80 percent or more. Of course, this really clogged up the court system for quite a while, because after this no defendant was willing to plea bargain.