Sometimes. Last winter I was called for jury duty and placed on a grand jury. There was no voir dire because a grand jury doesn’t decide the cases. I’m a psychologist and a professor. I have a local father-in-law who is an ex-state trooper. My wife has been sued. There was no one to say any of this to. On the same jury were a volunteer emergency person, a person whose spouse worked for the same court, a retired professor, and a woman who was terribly ill who coughed, sneezed, and several times actually fell out of her chair.
I have no argument with jury duty. I do have an argument with a 4-week term of service that required 5-day-a-week availability, unknown hours announced at 6:00 PM the night before (if they bothered to put the message on the machine, which was not always the case), being stuck in a small room with somebody with pneumonia, and having no way to schedule my clients except in the evenings, which was incredibly disruptive. They then extended us for a quarter of a year, telling us not to leave town without notifying them. They said they’d tell us when we were released–they never did. The volunteer secretary couldn’t figure out when we even were to finish out 4 weeks and nobody else would answer the question. It really soured me on jury duty, which, I underscore, I had no argument with and would have enjoyed had it been only a few days. Know who was excused? People with vacation plans (did I mention it was over Hannukah and Christmas?).
At the moment, I am Juror #13 in my county’s Grand Jury, serving one day a week roughly bi-weekly until March 6. As soon as I got the summons, I called the Clerk of the Court because I was scheduled to be out of town for work and I needed to find out if there was a conflict - I had to know if someone would have to take my trip for me. I could just hear the frustration in the Clerk’s voice - she surely thought I was trying to get out of it. Instead, it turns out there was a conflict with the trip, but she excused me for that one day.
I’ve already served the first day, and it was largely boring due to the State’s Attorney who droned on and on about the Magna Carta and the difference between a Grand Jury and a Trial Jury and a bunch of other tangents. The real jury part was more interesting, and pretty straightforward, once people remembered that we didn’t have to decide guilt or innocence - just if the state had enough evidence to warrant a trial.
In my county, we are reimbursed for “expenses”, to the tune of $15 per day. I can see where that would put a financial hurt on a lot of people. I work for Uncle Sam, so it’s no biggie for me. Another thing I find interesting - I’ve been in this county just over 3 years, yet I lived other places much longer and have only had 2 other summons. One was a phone in deal that never went anywhere, and the other came after I’d moved out of state. So that’s 3 summons in 53 years - hardly a burden in the grand scheme of things.
I pretty much agree with jackelope on this matter.
I served my first jury duty earlier this year during the week of a major exam. I didn’t even have any guarantee that I was going to be available the day of the exam, and my professor could not let me take it at another time, though she agreed to just calculate my final grade without factoring the missed exam in.
It was a surprisingly pleasant experience. The jurors all got along very well, and we got to listen to lots of expert testimony on neuropsychology. It had to do with no-fault insurance policies in the state of Michigan, so I wouldn’t exactly call it high stakes. The judge welcomed us into his chambers after the trial to answer any questions we had about the legal process or his opinion on the case.
I made the exam after all, though I missed a lot of good study time and didn’t do as well as I could have.
I think financial hardship, such as being unable to pay your bills because of jury duty, is a pretty good reason to be excused. I think living overseas is another good excuse. I even think the case causing you an unusual amount of emotional stress is a pretty decent excuse–there are some cases in which I would probably ask to be excused rather than reminded of painful events in my past.
Other than that, suck it up. Your minor inconvenience is another person’s fair shake at justice.
All these reasons would have been considered acceptable grounds for dismissal during my recent experience. The case I sat on was an MVA, and no one got hurt in it, but one of the other jurors had been involved in a major MVA in her younger years - the judge asked her if serving on this case would cause her a hardship, with the clear implication that if she said “yes” she would have been excused.
I’d also like to state, explicitly, that I think that college students should be allowed to get deferments, even if it’s not a test day that they might be called to serve for. Especially given the fact that schools have schedules, with a good deal of free time between semesters, where jury duty could be accomodated.
Guin, yes, as DocCathode said, I was just joking abut faking a seizure to get out of jury duty, but also to get out of answering too many financial questions if you are trying to plead hardship. I don’t think that’s the way to go for you. That bit you quoted from Giraffe is really the best advice, just be honest.
If you really are so worried about making the “wrong” decision to the point of having some kind of nervous breakdown then I hope you are seeing a psychiatrist. If that’s the case, ask them if they agree and, if so, get a physician’s note to exempt you. I have a feeling you aren’t quite that emotionally delicate so my WAG would be that he or she would say that it might do you some good.
Duty my ass. The police are paid, the prosecutors are paid, the defence attorneys are usually paid, the judges are paid and paid and paid, the court clerks are paid, the court reporters are paid, the court security are paid. Jurors should at least be fairly compensated, but they are not – they only receive a token at best. That is shameful.
I’m surprised a lawyer would make such a silly comment. Jury duty is simply a tax on your time, and IMHO a lot more legitimate than income taxes. At least jury duty goes directly to preserving our justice system rather than funding illegal invasions or welfare queens (depending on which extreme of the political pet peeves you are).
Also, think how much it would bloat the justice budget to “fairly compensate” 12 people per trial. Where’s that money going to come from? Oh yeah. You and me.
This is such a weird attitude, to me. If you were ever put on trial, wouldn’t you want the trial by a jury of your peers to which you are entitled? How else can the government provide you with that without jury duty? I feel obligated and honored to fulfill this responsibility, the same way I feel about voting, and I don’t get paid to do that either.
I can’t believe people have such a crap attitude. Yeah, democracy sucks, it’s the worst form of government except for all the others that have been tried.
To the OP I say: suck it up. Go down there for a day. Chances are you won’t even get called, you’ll just sit on your ass for a couple of hours and then go home. Small price to pay for being an American, IMO.
Taxes are applied equitably. The financial burden of jury service is not equitable. Surely you would not support a tax system in which only those few unfortunate to have their names drawn out of a hat would pay all the taxes, while most people who’s names are not pulled do not pay any taxes.
Far better to have society as a whole fund the jury system through taxation, rather than the financial hit be absorbed only by the jurors. The cost is there – the issue is whether or not it should be spread over the society which benefits from it.
Muffin, can I ask how you’d fairly compensate people for their time on juries? Do you straight match their salaries, with the implication that people will be being paid wildly different rates for identical work? Do you set compensation artificially high to keep the doctor or lawyer from taking a financial hit?
Mind you, I think it’s shameful that jury duty doesn’t recompense at least to match the minimum wage rate - based on the information in this thread, NYS seems to be a high compensating jurisdiction, and that’s only at a nominal $5 an hour rate. But I don’t think that there would be any way to be completely fair about how the hardship is apportioned.
Which doesn’t mean it can’t, or shouldn’t be better.
I’d be happy either way, be it flat rated or proportional rate, so long as the amount is sufficient to compensate the average Joe. My preference, however, would be proportional in which the per diem is based on a fraction (e.g. 1/250th) of the juror’s previous year’s income, with a cap at some sane amount in the event that Bill Gates gets called.
It is equitable-- everyone who can be called, will eventually be called. Whether they will have to serve is a matter of serendipity, but the chances of it being you are pretty equal for everyone. I don’t see what’s so inequitable about how it’s done. You happen to get called, you get whatever the court pays EVERYONE, and you do your duty. I still think it’s a small price to pay, overall.
Why would (or should) doctors and lawyers be exempt from jury duty?
Because the wealthy are privileged in our society.
Presumably a physician would be saving someone’s life rather than listening to testimony about a bad back after a car wreck, and lawyers, well hell, who would want to put their fate in the hands of one of those guys?
Serendepity is not equitable. Remember, my issue is with the financial inequity suffered by jurors, not whether the means of juror selection is equitable. Let’s not confuse the issues.
Doctors – greater value to society keeping them at their jobs. Lawyers – supposedly it’s bad to have an insider on a jury, but honestly, I think it is because lawyers would rather not take the financial hit of sitting on juries.
Let me clarify – if a lawyer or any other person who works inside the system were to sit on a jury, there is a chance that that person might influence the decisions of the other jurors – argumentum ad auctoritas – hey, fellow jurors, you should vote as I do, 'cause I know what I’m talking about 'cause I’m a lawyer.
