I am 24 and I was just sent a summons by the state to appear for jury duty. I have no problem going, but it is on 5/20 and I (have not finished booking) was hoping to be out of the country from 6/4-6/27 for a short class abroad and to meet a few particular European politicians for my doctoral thesis.
So how does everything work? I heard that they will send me a questionnaire, then on the day of I will be called into the courtroom to answer another questionnaire, and from there will be selected or dismissed.
I just want to know, if I am by chance selected for a case, can I get out of it if it is to last more than 2 weeks?
It depends on the case. They typically will not tell you what case you may be sitting for up front. Some cases may be quick, others not so much - they will provide more details once you are sitting in the jury box. Until then, you just cannot know.
Once you are selected for a jury, you cannot just get out of it because it is not convenient; you need to get out of it before you go to the courthouse. If you just flake out after being seated for a jury, you will receive a visit from local law enforcement people, and a fine. If I were you, I would ask to be deferred until later in the year - your reason is that you have committed to this travel, and it is related to your education, and it would be a hardship to cancel.
I agree with kanicbird - you should get a postponement.
How to go about doing this varies by jurisdiction, so I don’t think anyone here can tell you what you need to do. Doesn’t the summons contain instructions for this?
I haven’t had a chance to see it, but I spoke to someone who said there should be a questionnaire I can complete now online that will automatically defer it depending on my availability.
Here in New York, you can get one rescheduling automatically just by asking. After that, you’re supposed to show a reason why you need to be rescheduled. My understanding is they’re pretty reasonable unless they feel you’re just trying to avoid serving.
Call, be polite and friendly, and ask to reschedule. Explain the reason. I find they’re very good at working with you. Actually, I called after accidentally MISSING mine, and they were great at giving me another opportunity, once I got out of jail. OK, just kidding about the jail part.
I just did this a few weeks ago.
I got a standby summons in the mail about four weeks before the JD date but am leaving for a trip the following day. I called the Jury Services number on the summons and there were some automated prompts for postponing my service for three or six months. The whole thing took about a minute and I didn’t even have to speak with anyone. It was surprisingly easy and convenient considering everything is difficult here in Cook County, Illinois.
As others have said, in most jurisdictions you can usually postpone for some number of months just by asking. In CT they even asked me to pick a day.
For some trials, the start date may be some days to a month or more after the jury is empaneled. If you go in and are called for voir dire for such a case, the judge or bailiff will say something like, “This case is scheduled to start on March 15th and might last 3 weeks, does anyone have a conflict?” At that point you can say you will be traveling or whatever.
In California there is a box to check on the summons form. Check the box, send it in, and you are done. Much better than gambling you won’t get selected.
This must be jurisdiction-dependent, because in my part of the world (Kansas), your availability is part of the questions asked at voir dire: “This trial is scheduled to last for two weeks; is that going to pose a hardship for any of you?” (Now whether the judge agrees that your particular situation is a hardship is another question, but I’ve seen pre-paid/non-refundable travel plans accepted as a valid hardship.) Part of the process of jury selection is picking people who are going to be available for the entire duration of the trial.
That said, most places will allow you to defer your service until you get back. Call the jury coordinator and ask what the procedures are in your jurisdiction. Big cities often have an automated way of doing it; in other places, you might have to go to the courthouse and explain to the judge why you need the deferral.
Part of the process of jury selection is picking people who aren’t going to be grumpy and angry that they lost money on pre-paid/non-refundable travel plans. Neither side wants a juror who will vote guilty out of spite, or not-guilty just to get out of the room.
I’m in Australia so the law may be a bit different to other jurisdictions but I would guess not markedly so.
The first way to get out is via any of the occupations listed in the regulations. You generally can’t be a juror if you are a policeman or lawyer. Professions such as doctors and dentists are usually exempt. There is a fairly big list there.
You can then get out of appearing due to personal circumstances. For instance if you are a home carer for other people e.g. a Mother of young children. You can also get out for health reasons
You can also get out of duty if it would interfere with your occupation too much. For instance if you are a obliged to travel for your work or you are a key employee who can’t be spared. I think this includes most military personnel.
If you have to turn up to court your chances of being selected are low. Especially if you look ‘odd’ (hint).
Finally if you do end up in a jury you can walk out - usually after writing a nice note to the judge. Simply explain you don’t feel able to make a fair judgement in the case. e.g. you are biased against used car salesmen or whatever, or that your moral principles make you highly biased such as in illegal abortion cases, or you can’t handle the subject matter - such as child pornography cases.
I’ve been in some trials where the juror takes a couple of days to reach this conclusion and they’ve been let go. Either a spare juror is used (they often empanel a jury of 15 for this reason and drop the excess by ballot at the end of evidence) Or the judge can decide to go on with a reduced jury.
Then of course is the simple ploy of sending batshit crazy written questions to the judge such as is the defendant a practicing satanist or are they a liberal?
Every time I have had jury duty, and I’ve had it many times, the judge has asked the jury panel (or pool, or whatever it is when you’re selected to go into the courtroom) if anyone can’t manage a trial last X days. If someone says they can’t, the judge asks why. I guess there are good reasons and bad reasons but the main thing is to not seat someone who’s going to want to get up and leave in the middle of the trial.
Now, the longest one I was ever on was supposed to last six days and only lasted four, so this was not a huge thing. In fact most of them over over in a day or two.
But I’m just saying, they asked before they seated the jury.
So I would go ahead and get the jury duty out of the way, unless you have some big famous trial coming up in your jurisdiction that might rope you in for longer.
Obviously, shit happens. This is why there are alternates on juries.
The case pulled a pool of 30 potential jurors from which they intended to select 6 plus an alternate. During *voire dire *they said the trial would last 5 days at most then asked everybody about travel plans, being a sole proprietor, sole caregiver, or other issues that would impede 5 days of availability.
I ended up as one of the 6. Everybody who had any schedule-related problem, however weak, was culled from the pool.
The trial lasted into the early evening of the third day.
Overall, better for the OP to postpone with the jury administration folks before the day of service. But it’s good to know there is, at least in some jurisdictions, later off-ramps in the process.
FWIW, I’ve been eligible for jury duty for almost 40 years now in one state or another. This was the first time I’d ever gotten as far as actually even having to show up for service, much less get into voire dire, much less be empanelled to hear a case.
Even if the OP does nothing in advance, the odds on actually being in court on service day, much less 2 weeks later, are between slim and astronomical.
Um, in the county I live in (in Kentucky, USA), policemen, lawyers and doctors are most definitely not exempt.
Now, are any of them likely to end up on a jury? Probably not. But I have a friend who is the wife of a doctor, and he has been summoned for jury duty several times, and been unable to convince the court that requiring him to be ON CALL for jury duty for a month is a hardship not just for him, but for his practice, and for people who have planned their schedules around their appointments with him. (On one occasion, they agreed to reduce his time to a week, several months later, so he could take a week’s vacation. And then he wasn’t needed for any juries that week, and had missed out on doing anything fun so was bitter. The next time, they told him to call in sick each individual day he was expected to be there. He felt bad for gaming the system, but also felt like the rules inconvenience him more than they are intended to).
I’ve heard stories featuring lawyers or the wife of a circuit court judge where they dutifully showed up, only to be dismissed from the pool of potential jurors because of too much knowledge of the law or the people involved in the case.
I don’t believe this is a fair generalization. In my county, if you are called for jury duty, you have to show up. And the last three times I’ve done it, they announced that they expected everyone in the room to at least make it to voire dire. I served on a panel two of those three times.
More than 10 years ago, they were less efficient, and had people showing up, sitting in the waiting room all day, and then sent home.
Side note: The last case I served on got three days into it, and then was declared a mistrial…because the plaintiff had a pre-arranged trip out of town.
ETA: Agreed that even in my situation, it’s unlikely to be held up for 2 weeks. Comments were more towards the “being in court on service day.”
Good point. Clearly the thread shows a wide variety of experiences across the country. The best info will come from the OP’s jurisdiction’s jury administrators.
Ref Eureka - I expected the line “My wife’s a former judge & currently practicing attorney” would be an effective “get disqualified at voire dire” card. But it wasn’t. At least the trial was interesting, brief, and not an ugly repellent crime.
But believe it or not, they aren’t entirely unreasonable, in my experience. When I was young, I received a summons and I postponed because I didn’t want to deal with it during school.
A while later, a few months after I graduated, I had my second (now non-postponable) summons. I was as yet still not employed in my field and had planned to attend. When a temp agency I had put in with a while back called me and told me a QC chemist had hurt her back at a local company and they needed a temp while she recovered* Naturally I was excited, but as temp agencies go, they needed me the following Monday. No available, no job. Monday was my day to report. I called the clerk of the court and explained the situation. The person I spoke with was very understanding and told me she would put me back into the general pool. A few years later when I was summoned I happily went in and was impaneled.
*And a good thing too- that job got me out of the experience trap and looking back on my career these decades later I can’t complain.