I’d love to do jury duty, even with $0 pay. But my business is structured such that if I’m not there, there are other people who aren’t needed, so they lose pay.
When I’ve gotten mail requesting my presence for jury duty I’ve been able to call and explain my situation and I’ve always been excused.
RE: jurors, oath-taking
The last time I served on a jury, sometime in the last 10 years, all jury members took an oath. I noticed the wording of the oath had changed from “traditional” and a Bible wasn’t used. It went something like this: “I swear or affirm to tell the truth…” etc. No mention of a holy book, deity, or “so help me God”. I was all set to refuse if they had hauled out a Bible (or Torah or Koran), but this new wording was quite acceptable to me.
Yours is a bona fide financial hardship and as I said, always an excuse. Judges don’t want to put good business people out of business or harm their employees. I will point out that most judges excuse on the basis of your financial hardship alone – not that of your employees, co-workers or company. But your situation certainly qualifies.
Thanks for sharing your experience. It’s a common one. I hope you get the chance to sit on a jury one day – I suspect you will.
I think it’s funny when people offer up what they believe are original amazing ideas on how to improve the jury system. It’s not like we have court administrators whose entire job is to think about and improve such things all day, every day.
Even better are the prospective jurors who come to court and dramatically explain to the judge why they should be excused – as if the judge hasn’t already heard every excuse under the sun.
There was one prospective juror in my experience who offered a completely original excuse. That one has, errr, stuck with me. I’ve shared it on the board before.
I had just administered the oath to the prospective jurors and this fellow shot to his feet.
“Your Honor! Your Honor!! I have to be excused!!”
The judge asked, “Do you mind sharing the reason you must be excused with such urgency?”
“I just shit my pants!” the fellow replied.
Based on how the other PJs were speedily moving away from him, we had no reason to doubt his assertion. The lawyers hastily stipulated to excuse the man and we sent him on his way. I had to call Jury Services to prepare them for his arrival and they were none too happy about it.
See? It’s not that hard to get out of jury duty.
Yep, you can “swear or affirm” most places (some people don’t want to swear an oath) I’ve been in a few places where they still say “so help me god,” or something like that. It hasn’t been part of the juror or witness oath in most places I’ve appeared since I started in 1987.
I will point out I volunteered to sit on the County Civil Grand Jury for a whole year, and yes, we did discuss the Jury system, and pay for jurors. Which was our duty. And our Jury did come up with some original amazing ideas- but not, I will admit on reforming jury duty (we suggested higher pay and more lenient excuse for hardship, which were accepted but I don’t think the county actually increased the pay). We inspected all the County jails, reviewed citizen complaints and did have one of the ideas for reforming part of the school system acted upon.