how does your county schedule jury duty?

I've been called for the first time to Jury duty, and also been denied a deferment and I'm curious if other counties or states make it as rough on people as mine does.

It is not that I do not wish to perform my civic duty, quite the opposite actually. At some point in the future I would be very interested to get a look at the legal system from the inside without actually standing before the judge myself My problem is that I am the primary caregiver for 2 small children. My wife starts her work day early and often works late and taking time off for her that is not planned for long in advance means having her office do a LOT of rescheduling and means more losses than just canceling a few appointments. Basically it means that it is not possible for her to take a day or a week off to watch the kids. My career is more flexible time wise and so it was I that decided to work at home and take care of the kids.

I explained in a letter to them that I was not able to afford the extra child care necessary to show up at the house at 7am so that I could go and sit in their offices, but that in another year or 2 when the youngest was in day care or pre-school I'd be happy to do it then. They replied that there was no legal reason why I couldn't go and therefore was expected to show up.

This is ludicrous isn't it? Then design a system where I can't even plan ahead more than 12 hours. I cannot find out if they even need me, nor when or for how long until after 6pm the night before. You are supposed to call in after 6 and enter your juror number and then they will tell you where to show up the next day. You must do this for every day for a week. So I'm supposed to find a babysitter for 7am the next morning after 6pm the night before? Sorry, life doesn't work that way. It's going to cost me hundreds of dollars in extra child care to pull this off when if I could plan ahead I could do it for significantly less, or if they would just let me ride for 2 years till Ben is in pre-school it would cost me nothing to do it. I would not have to leave the children with baby sitters I dont usually use and everybody would be happy.

Instead I'm seriously considering taking myself off the voters rolls for the next couple of years to avoid being called again. Hows that for democracy in action, make it so onerous for you to do this that you can't afford to!

I just can't believe that everywhere runs this the same way, is it true that you basically have to be on call without any idea if you will need child care for a week? Is child care really not a valid reason not to be on a jury when you wont know how many days it might be before you come home? Or is it just some weird reverse discrimination thing against me because I'm a man trying to use child care as an excuse.

Before anybody tries to berate me for not wanting to do my duty, as I said above, I want to do this! I'm very interested in the whole process. I just can't do it right now as it is putting a significant burden on me. Anybody that has had children will know what a scheduling and expensive baby sitter issue a week of potentially having someone in at 7am is!

I'm tempted to just tell the judge that I'd make an excellent juror because I can spot guilty people just by looking at them But of course, we already know the law has no sense of humor, so I'll probably avoid being flippant, but I'll be honest if they care to hear what difficulty I'm going through to be there for them.

I can tell you that New York State is just as bad. Basically, there seem to be very few acceptable reasons for a deferment short of being in such bad physical shape that you literally can't serve on a jury. Yes, you can get one or two automatic deferments without any reason given but once these deferments run out they don't accept that many reasons for not serving. Like you, I feel the system is far too harsh on people who may one day want to do their duty, but not necessarily when called. Here's a list of excuses which I feel should be valid but aren't:

1) You have small children for whom you can't get a babysitter.
2) You're the sole proprietor of your own business, and if you serve on a jury it can cost you big time in income and/or lost business. This is particularly valid if like me you may make most of your income in a few weeks of the year. If jury duty happens to fall during the time when you happen to get a major project in you can lose upwards of 50% of your annual income.
3) You conscienciously object to the concept of jury duty.
4) You feel you don't have the right or ability to judge someone else.
5) You fear revenge on the part of any criminal you might convict and send to prison.
6) You work nights and are physically unable to change to the day hours jury duty requires on short notice.
7) You must care for elderly parents or other sick family members.
8) You're going on vacation, have made arrangements prior to receiving the notice for jury duty, and changing or cancelling your plans will cost you a lot of money.

Besides being unreasonable as far as allowing excusal from jury duty, one of my pet peeves is that you usually get a notice a week or two before you're supposed to serve. While making other arrangements in many of the circumstances mentioned above might be possible if you were given 6 months notice, it may not be possible on a few weeks notice. I actually asked a person in the system why they don't give six months notice, and she said it was because "people would lose the notices". Basically then everybody suffers because a few people are disorganized.

BTW, the system here works the same as it does there. Once you get the notice you're supposed to call in starting Sunday night to see if you're needed the next day. However, you still often have to make arrangements in advance just in case you do have to go down. If you aren't needed by the end of the week you're off the hook-until next year. That's another of my pet peeves about jury duty. Once you get called if you they don't need you to serve they can bother you every year until you die. Even if you serve I was told that they can call you again in another 4 years. I had always been under the impression that serving on a jury is a once in a lifetime thing. Apparently not. Another of my pet peeves is that it turns out that the seemingly sudden need over the last decade or so for large numbers of jurors is mainly to serve on civil cases. Now I might accept occasional disruption of my life if someone's freedom is at stake, but not to decide on a stupid lawsuit. Given the idiotic decisions rendered by juries in tort cases, I'm of the firm opinion that they should be handled solely by judges and/or paid professional jurors.

IMHO the best thing for all concerned would be to have a pool of professional jurors who are trained and paid a weekly salary, and who serve all the time. Basically, it would be a job as a juror. You can supplement this with a pool of people who volunteer to serve on juries. Compulsory jury service, especially with fewer and fewer excusals, is inherently very disruptive and unfair. It should be a relic of the past. The system should also move to more bench trials where a panel of judges gives the verdict.

I'm also seriously considering not voting any more so I can't be called for jury duty, although I believe they also use tax returns. Best thing to do is to write your representatives. If enough people petition to have the system changed to an all volunteer and/or professional juror system then maybe legislators will listen. In all honesty, given the abysmal rates at which juries make mistakes I can't say we wouldn't be better off just changing the law to allow using lie detectors instead. I'm 100% serious.

I am a stay at home dad with a 2 1/2 yr old. The only way to get out of it is to move (or use another address ) which I am going to do.



I am no longer going to vote.

Interesting how when you dont have a choice about something, there is no motivation on those supplying it to do anything but the worst job they can possibly do. I have no doubt that getting enough people in to do this job is difficult and hard to manage, but that doesn't excuse this. The only reason that people dont rebel is that they are called so rarely.

What makes this even funnier is that I was called for both state court duty and county court duty less than 2 weeks apart. I've been registered to vote for 20 years and never been called before, and I get stuck with it twice in the same month. And yet neither would budge, either for child care nor for the onerous of having to potentially take 2 weeks off this month.

the state however, fell through. I heard from them a week later saying that they had reduced the rolls and that I was no longer needed and that my number would be put back in the polls for another time.

My daughter is 5 and in Kindergarden, so if I could guarantee when I would be home I could arrange for someone to pick her up and take care of her for a few hours. But my son is 17 months old. The reason he's not in day care is that I am home to look after him. We simply dont have the babysitting resources. That being said I've imposed on the ones we do know and it will cost me approximately $60 additional a day to have a baby sitter here that early in the morning. Thats not including at all any calculation of my billable time lost, or jobs or contracts lost because I'm not here to answer the phone when the next big contract calls up to say hi.

I will be contacting my representatives. How long do they put you in jail for bringing fija pamphlets into the court house now days? The fact that I even know thee is such a thing should be enough to get me off the jury, but I have to somehow bring it up during the interview. Perhaps I should honestly tell them that I wont find someone guilty if I consider the law to be unjust, and that I will not find someone innocent if I feel the defense is on a technicality of the law rather than the facts, and that I will not judge at all if I feel that not enough information was brought forward, or was brought forward incorrectly by the lawyers...

James, I don't recall if you are in the bay area (Cal) or not.

In California, you can request a deferment and specify the date up to 6 months out. This allows you to schedule it when you know a family member can watch the kids for a morning, or for when your wife can take a few vacation days.

My sister in law is the jury commisioner in Dan Diego. The reason for the seemingly stupid "call in" technique you described simple. Lawyers get a trial date, and wait till that day to ask for a continuance, make a plea bargin or cop a plea. This means that at 8 AM, there may be a need for 6 jury pools, but by noon they need none.

While personal loss of income is not enough to excuse you from reporting for jury duty, it may well be enough that the judge will let you off at the beginning of the jury selection.

I wish the courts would provide day care for folks like you. Hey! Maybe they do. Give the jury commish's office a call and you may get lucky.


Now MY personal peeve with the jury system is two things:

1) we have 3 court houses in my county, and neither my wife nor myself have ever been assigned jury duty in the one 2 miles from my house.

2) I hate spending the morning in a jury waiting room when the crooks and their lawyers know it's not going to trial. Then you get sent home after lunch. What a waste. I'd love to see the law changed so that one week before the court date is the limit for continuances and bargains. That would let them cut the number of jurors on standby in half, and when you are scheduled you'd know that you were going to do somthing.


BTW, of the half a dozen times I've been summoned for jury duty, I've only made it into the courtroom twice and only actually sat on one jury. It was a neat experiance when I finally sat on the jury.

Daniel

James S said:

Interesting how when you dont have a choice about something, there is no motivation on those supplying it to do anything but the worst job they can possibly do. I have no doubt that getting enough people in to do this job is difficult and hard to manage, but that doesn't excuse this.

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And the irony here is that if you could volunteer for jury duty at a time convenient for you, and it was indeed a once in a lifetime thing as it used to be, it would be easier to get people to actually serve who want to serve.

The only reason that people dont rebel is that they are called so rarely.

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Unfortunately now with jury duty becoming an annual ritual in many parts of the country, plus being made much harder to get out of than it used to be, you're going to see more and more people rebeling against it, even suggesting doing away with compulsory jury duty altogether.

How long do they put you in jail for bringing fija pamphlets into the court house now days? The fact that I even know thee is such a thing should be enough to get me off the jury, but I have to somehow bring it up during the interview.

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From what I heard, just bringing up the fact that you are aware of the existence and technicalities for jury nullification is not only enough to have you rejected as a potential juror 99% of the time, but will in many places get you "blacklisted" as a juror so you'll never put on the list again. Fact is that lawyers and judges want sheep on a jury who aren't aware of their rights and responsibilities as jurors. For those not familiar with it, jury nullification is the principle where you can find a defendent not guilty if you consider the law he/she was charged under unjust. For example, I could never in good conscience convict someone of cycling on the sidewalk since I feel such a law is inherently unjust for a variety of reasons I've already mentioned in other threads. Anyway, "jury nullification" are two words lawyers and trial judges dread hearing.

Gee, everbody, the solution to this is right in front of you!

Bring your children with you. You will be dismissed within 15 minutes!

"I'm sorry your honor, but I could not arrange for childcare with such short notice."

Where I am, you can get a one-time deferment basically by asking for it. In my case I asked for an earlier date rather than a later one, sort of a reverse deferment, and they said no problem. There's a "one day or one trial" rule with no call-in system. You show up on the appointed day and sit in a big waiting room for up to several hours, during which they summon people from the room to different trials ("Jane Smith please go to courtroom #5"). Once they have enough jurors for the trials happening that day, anyone left in the waiting room is sent home and is then off the hook for 1 year. If you're assigned to a trial, you have to serve for as long as the trial lasts (could be several days), but again, you're subsequently off the hook for 1 year.

in spending even more time on this rainy cold day inside with the kids and surfing the internet I find that georgia actually has a "family friendly jury" policy about a couple of things and specifically says that the "primary" (not the sole as I suspected) caregiver of a child under 4 shall be excused if they cannot find suitable care elsewhere. They do say that I might have to give an affidavit to that effect, but I"m happy to do that as it is the truth. But I have printed it out and will take it with me when I report. Should be interesting at the least.

I'll be sure to post with the results!

My county handles it the same way but they require a mandatory orientation class before the days that potential jurors must be available. During the orientation, the judge complains about people for shirking their duties and makes mention of holding people in contempt if they try to use an excuse that he disagrees with.

Forget the dropping out of the voting registration. My county uses a combination of voting records, tax records, drivers license registrations, land and automobile property records, and everything else they can think of. They claim they enlarge the potential juror pool to keep the chances of anyone being called twice to a minimum.

Here in Wayne Co., Michigan they usually send a questionnaire for you to fill out asking about medical conditions, whether you are or were a police officer, etc. It states on it that it is not a summons for jury duty, only to get information. Generally a month or two after filling it out and sending it in you get a summons for jury duty in the mail. A few people I know have never mailed the questionnaire back and have never had jury duty.

I have been called for county jury duty 3 or 4 times and federal jury duty once. I was chosen to sit on a jury one time and ended up getting excused because one of the police officers was friend from high school.

Here where I am, they give orientation (you watch a 20 minute video) in the waiting room. They specifically say they get addresses from all these different sources and it's possible to get summoned multiple times in a year (it's theoretically possible to get summoned every week), but you only have to serve at most once per year. When you show up for service they enter your summons number into a computer and you're supposed to save the summons, so in case you get summoned again that year, you can give them the old number to show that you already served. In practice I've only gotten summoned once in the 5+ years I've been here, and didn't get sent to jury selection (got sent home from the waiting room after about 3 hours). I think about 2/3 of the people in the room were sent to jury selection and about 1/3 (including me) weren't. Of those sent to selection, probably most didn't actually get selected, so also ended up getting sent home that day.

I've been "summoned" 4 times. I was empaneled on the first, and had the pleasure of sending a "personal injury" attorney and his client packing. I was empaneled on the 2nd and helped send one of our guests from down south "up the river" for raping his kid sister. (Not to mention he was her legal guardian!) The third time, I was 2 days in the pool and one person short of getting empaneled. :relief: The 4th wanted me calling-in on 2/10 (SHOT Show time ) I filled-out the paperwork and requested a 1-month postponement. The return letter gave me a new date in April. Jury duty is interesting. I am fortunate that my employer pays me full wages for time served. (What? I'm cheering Corporate Political Correctness? ) To be in a "jury-nullification"-worthy case could be interesting!

Larry

I got called up for U.S. District Court--175 miles away. They didn't accept any excuse for not showing up, except maybe being in the hospital! There were about 75 of us trying to fit in the jury pool waiting room and they had to move us into an empty court room as there wasn't enough room. Then they dropped the bomb-shell; "You have not been called to serve on a regular jury; we're here today to pick the Grand Jury! You will serve the first and third Thursdays of every month--for the next 18 months!" I just about s*** my pants! How the heck do they expect people to get time off from work 24 times a year? Use vacation time? Yeah, right! They had to pick 25 jurors and 10 alternates. I was thinking maybe my luck would get better. Nope! Number 21. Damn! They asked if anyone had any reason why they couldn't serve. My reason was I didn't get paid for jury duty and it was a long way to drive. Since I had to be there at 8:00 a.m., I would have to spend the night in a motel near the courthouse. The only thing that saved me was all 10 alternates said they could serve. If I was retired, it would have been totally cool and very interesting to serve, but since I have to work, all I would be thinking about on the drive up, during the jury "work", and on the drive back would be the work I'm missing and how far behind I was getting; inconveniencing everybody I work with.
I still had to call in every Friday for a month to see if I was needed for the next week. Luckily, I wasn't needed.

Got another call for the second week of February (hey that's next month!) and they have all these questionnaire(s) to be answered. I don't "fit" the qualifications to NOT want to be. I think it's every (3) years I get called up. The last time I got called, I was automatically a prospective juror number 10 and in the box I went. That was because I ignored the prior calling and this was my "second chance" to make it right. Of course it was a murder trial. After the questioning the last thing I said to the judge and lawyers was: "To me he looks guilty!" I was excused.

Is it just me, or do people with college degrees seem to NOT get called/kept?

It's just you, TD.

The jury mix depends on the case, the defendents and the plaintiff.

I seem to recall that there were college grads on the jury I worked on.

I wish more people saw JD as their privlige, and not as only a burden. We need smart, sensible people on juries. We seem to end up with a lot that are ill infromed and unwilling.


Daniel

turbodog said:

Is it just me, or do people with college degrees seem to NOT get called/kept?

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I have a college degree and have been summoned. . .Never served as a juror though—And That's About It!

I've long heard it said that if you are perceived as a "law and order" type person, based on your answers or occupation, you will likely be excused.

Geoff

gadget_lover said:

I wish more people saw JD as their privlige, and not as only a burden. We need smart, sensible people on juries. We seem to end up with a lot that are ill infromed and unwilling.

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I agree but the system as it exists is what makes jury duty a burden. If people could volunteer at a time of their own choosing, serve only on criminal cases, and were only required to serve once in their lifetime (but could serve more if they wish), you would increase the pool of potential jurors to probably close to 100% of the population. The problem is a system that gives you little control over when you serve, as well as the fact that many localities can force you to serve every single year. Even with standby systems where you just call in, having at least a week of your life disrupted each year is just too much for most people, and having to go to court without actually serving is another undue burden. Can't they weed unqualified jurors out with questionnaires sent their homes instead of forcing them to come to court? It's a shame that the legislators living in ivory towers who make up these rules can't see how they turn something which should be a good experience into a nightmare. What results from it is a population for whom jury duty is the second worst thing after filing their taxes. Small wonder people try to get out of it any way they can.

As I mentioned earlier a large part of the present problem stems from the plethora of civil cases which are requiring more jurors than ever. Something should be done to severely decrease the use of jury trials with civil cases so that nobody need serve on a jury more than once, maybe twice, in a lifetime. The whole purpose of the jury system was to allow outsiders not jaded by the system to make impartial decisions. I submit that annual jury service undermines that purpose by making the average juror nearly as jaded as those in the system.