One of the elements of jury duty in my state is that all potential jurors who have been summoned watch a video about the process. The video was created by employees of the state’s court system, and one of the speakers is a state supreme court justice, who says, among other things, that even being a supreme court justice doesn’t automatically disqualify a person for jury duty. (She ended up not being picked when she was summoned, however, for understandable reasons.)
When I sat on a jury, there were three teachers on the jury. And it was NOT during the summer.
Our system does things differently…A group of people are given a number. Then they call that group to go into the courthouse (if in call-in duty) or into a courtroom (if already in reported). The group called seems random (so you can’t tell the if you are next or not). Once in a courtroom, they use individual numbers for each person but those, again, are drawn at random so it doesn’t matter if you have a high or low number.
And yet, with all this randomness, I still managed to get on a jury 4 out 5 times…
Evidently even being President doesn’t automatically disqualify you: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2015/08/06/president-george-bush-jury-duty-dallas/31205277/
@threeofthree, I remember that rule about not having to serve if you are a FT parent to a child under 10 from my years in Texas. I was very pleasantly surprised to be exempt there.
That is not the case in MA, where I had once had to bring my 2 week old son with me to the courthouse (they dismissed me at the door!) I did get called again when my kids were in elementary school and I was working PT, but only had to report for half a day.
I was called once from CA (my family’s residence when I was in college), but was studying abroad that year, so my mother mailed in the form and I presume, got me out of it.
I’ve never understood how it can be that some people get called over and over, and others not at all, all other things being equal in terms of registering to vote, having a driver’s license, etc.
@Massmomm - I’d take a peek at the California bench warrant list just to confirm you haven’t been wanted for xx years!
I have been called about 10 times in the past 15 years. Made it to panel 4 times if I remember correctly, but have never been chosen for a jury. When being dismissed, the judge always gave a speech: “don’t feel bad for not being chosen” while I and the other jurors skip down the hallway.
In one case, I was dismissed for sharing that I had a problem sentencing a man to jail for possession of less than a half ounce of pot. I guess he had multiple convictions (three strikes rule) but the only charge we were dealing with was simple possession without intent to distribute. Another time I was on a panel for a car theft and someone did not like my answer for what I considered “reasonable doubt”. I was on a panel for domestic violence attempted murder case and the judge excused us to the hall while they cleared something up. A woman approached me in the hall and asked if I would be a jury member and I responded I did not know. She then told me she was the mother of the victim and wanted to help and I told her she should not be talking to anyone. When we went back in, I was dismissed as my SIL was a victim of DV. I always wondered if I should have said more but at that point, I just wanted to be out of the courtroom.
One time I waited in the jury pool all day, not being called. I kept waiting to be let go when they called a huge panel late in the afternoon and my number was called. We entered a HUGE courtroom with multiple lawyers on each side. It looked liked a movie set as compared to my other experiences in the same courthouse. It turned out to be a medical malpractice suit involving a child injured at birth. The judge stated he thought the case would take a minimum of six weeks and gave each panel member a chance to speak. I simply said I had two teen sons at home and felt six weeks plus was too long to be away. He asked if I trusted my kids and I said yes but I still believed they needed supervision. I was dismissed.
I spent a day in the jury pool room during the Casey Anthony trial. What a mess! The traffic, the waits, it was nuts. Satellite trucks everywhere. They had a separate line for jurors to enter but you still had to walk past the picketers with their “baby killer” signs. Very unnerving. I was not chosen for a panel that day, but there was no wifi allowed in the courthouse during that trial which really made for a long, long day. Even my “go to” diner was so packed during the lunch break, I went back to type courthouse and got a protein bar out of the vending machine.
Interesting how different it is in different areas.
I’ve got the mailing twice… only 1 time I had to show up. There were 2 trials. I was slated for jury selection for the second trial, but they settled it during the morning outside of court. So I was at the courthouse from roughly 8-12 for nothing… lol.
Just sat in a room and played on the smart phone.
I have only been sent jury duty requests twice. The first time I’d just moved out of the county, so I didn’t have to show up. The second time, I was picked for a murder trial. It was actually quite interesting, but I admit, for months after the trial I paid closer attention to my surroundings than before.
When my daughter was away at school, she was called. I went to the courthouse and arranged for her to be on the list for winter break. She wound up calling in for four days and not having to go in. A friend of mine in the same situation did not listen to my advice and had her daughter ignore the notice; the upshot was that she had to take a week off from school the following semester to come home and serve or risk being held in contempt. My oldest son served federal jury duty and loved it so much that he said he wishes that there were professional jurors because he’d train to be one.
There are! They are called arbitrators! (Well, not identical, but if he enjoys finding facts to resolve disputes, that’s basically what arbitrators do.)
There are a million ways to call potential jurors, and they change all the time. I worked in a court and it was ‘one week or one trial’ but by about Wednesday if you weren’t called it was unlikely you would be. Then it changed to ‘one day or one trial.’ At one time clergy, cops, insurance people and lawyers were all automatically excused, but that changed and everyone was required to show up and plead their excuses, and there were some doozies.
My sister was called for a capital murder trial - very rare in our state. They called 500 jurors for that trial alone. Both sides had the names for a few weeks before trial and they investigated those names. Anyway, on day one they excused half of those called for various reasons, including that it would be a sequestered jury for 3 weeks in Dec. Many were excused because they stated they could not imposed the death penalty. The rest went through various layers of interviews and investigation. My sister made it through several cuts, but in the end was not chosen. She was a practicing lawyer at the time, but knew nothing about criminal law.
When I lived in Florida, a co-worker (an attorney) was called and selected for a jury. When she returned to work, she said it was a capital murder case. I asked if it was the XX case which had been in the national news. Nope, that trial was also going on but hers was another capital case. I was amazed. They had no problem seating two jurors from a small jury pool in the same week for two capital cases, and no problem getting through the cases in less than a week.
Perhaps dissatisfaction with jury duty can be lessened if policies like the following were made:
- One day or one trial. I.e. your jury duty is fulfilled if you check the night before and are told not to report, are dismissed after reporting, or complete the trial on which you are assigned during jury selection starting that day.
- Jury summons are sent well in advance of the date of jury service.
- When receiving a jury summons, the person can reschedule to a date of his/her choice within a large range of possible dates (e.g. up to a year after the original date of jury service). It is reasonable to require such rescheduling to be done sufficiently in advance of the original and rescheduled dates of jury service.
Many courts have those policies, and still there are people who complain and don’t want to do it.
Some courts (federal courts too) have had to round up juries off the street. They can do that and make you serve right then. It’s very inconvenient to be out walking around during your lunch hour and be required to serve.
I have never been called to serve jury duty. No idea why.
My two youngest kids (the youngest was still 18) have served jury duty this past year.
The youngest had a day of " come in and wait" duty and then was dismissed for the rest of the week.
The older one was A juror on a major drug/home invasion case that was dismissed after the lunch break on the first day when a witness that the defense had assumed wouldn’t show up, did, indeed, show up. The defendants decided to take a plea bargain (one took a 17 year prison deal - that is how heinous the charges were). I can’t tell you how glad I was that that case didn’t go all the way through a trial.
I used to think getting called depended on whether you registered to vote, but now I’m pretty sure it’s census (at least in MA), since D got called from new address (in same state) just 8 months after she’d served from home address. The landlord included her name on his census report a month or two earlier. H and I get called every 4 years like clockwork.
Years ago, I was put on panel for questioning by attorneys & the judge. (Tried to get dismissed because I was an attorney, like I had in NY - this was ages ago - but no go; and anyway I never did any criminal work). They didn’t tell us anything about the case except it was criminal, and in walked a very nicely dressed male defendant with a pleasant smile, introduced by his attorney. Then they announced the defendant was on trial for murder, and I noticed the victim, a male, had the same last name as the accused. My first thought was he’d murdered a parent or brother, then it dawned on me it could be a kid. My son was 1 and home with a sitter I only trusted about 80% (I worked part time and it was a day our usual sitter was off). The victim was an infant. Then the judge mentioned that we might see pictures that would be disturbing, and that the defendant was Hispanic, and we would be asked whether we might have a bias based on visually upsetting photos or the accused’s race. The judge questioned us first. I started to cry (silently) before I even got called up to the bench, and when I finally did and he asked if I might have a bias based on race, of course I said no, then based on disturbing photos, and holding back tears I said “Your honor, I have a one-year old son at home…”
Dismissed. Immediately before I said another word. (But not because I planned it, I assure you, just my natural mom instincts were so visible, how could I be unbiased)?
I don’t think any information is released off the federal census for years, so I doubt the juror rolls are connected. Here they use voter registration, motor vehicle records, real estate ownership.
It was a state/local census, I should have clarified. It was the only way the municipality (or state) would have had that address for D, she still uses home address for everything else.
I don’t know if they still do it this way, but when I lived in Los Angeles County years ago, we were required to show up for 10 days straight. Even if you were called for a jury while there and either dismissed or that jury ended before your 10 days were up, you had to stay and finish out the time. I didn’t have kids yet and my company paid for the time, but it was frustrating to sit there for so long in a very shabby room. I ended up on a jury for a man accused of making a bomb threat to a police station, but part way through he sort of lost it, so they dismissed us all. The only plus was that we were downtown LA and were given long lunches that I used to hit the garment district and other fun areas. Also the first day I reported was the first day of the bus strike and traffic to get there was HORRIBLE. They threatened to dismiss those of us who were late and make us come back another time, but since everyone was late, they gave up.
Now that I live in another county to the north, I routinely get called once a year. Here we can take our chances and call the night before to see if we have to report the next day, but you have to call every night for a week. If your group number is high it is worth taking a chance, but if you have a low number, it is better to go with the 2nd option of committing to a particular day of the week and going. I go every year but have not ended on a jury yet. At least the jury room here is nice with great Wi-Fi, a cafeteria, and a beautiful outside area we can wait in.