I always hear that but never understood the rationale. Why cut someone if they want to serve on a jury? Why do lawyers automatically assume some kind of agenda when a person wants to do a duty that most people would be annoyed by?
I think dragging people who don’t want to do it makes less sense. They’re less likely to take their job seriously, probably less qualified to make an informed decision, and have no more tendencies to have an agenda than people who want to be a on a jury
I think it’s just that the attorney would be suspicious of their motives for wanting to do so.
In some jurisdictions (NYS?) once you serve on a jury you’re name is taken out the pool and you’re exempt from jury duty for a number of years (I think 5) unless you move to another county. One can volunteer to have their name placed back into the jury pool before your exemption was up.
The only case of someone “volunteering” for jury duty was from my grandmother. When she first registered to vote at age 21 she could choose not to put her name in the jury pool because she was a woman; male voters automatically went into the jury pool. This was in the 1940s and I’m certain that law is long gone. She registered for jury duty; she thought it was ridiculous to even be asked.
(Warning: Anecdote) I have been on a jury a number of times, and in my experience, this doesn’t really hold. The general reaction seems to be “I don’t want to be here, there a hundred things I’d rather be doing, but people’s fates are at stake, and thus I have no real choice to weigh the evidence as best I can.”
This was true even for me, and the other jurors, in the absolutely mind-numbing trademark infringement case I served on.
Also, Superhal, I get called for jury duty about once every ten months or so, on average. If you are in the greater Santa Barbara area, I could just give you my summons the next time I get called. I’m pretty sure that’s not technically legal, but I don’t recall anyone ever asking for ID.
In New York State, the exemption is 6 years. Personal experience from about 5 months ago.
You don’t want to drag anyone on the jury who really, really doesn’t want to serve either, because they may take it out on your side. Mostly you want people like RadicalPi - folks who would rather be doing something else, but understand the importance of jury duty and will do it anyway.
Why would you cut those eager to serve? Dewey Finn got it - you’ve got to question the motive of anyone who wants to be on a jury. It may well be that they’re simply interested in the process and genuinely want to do a civic duty, but the flipside is that the guy may be a wingnut with an agenda - he wants to stick it to the man, he wants to hammer some schnook in retaliation for something, he may get a charge out of being in power over the lives of others, etc. It’s not that you assume that he’s the wingnut rather than the civic minded citizen, it’s that you don’t know which one he is because you’ve never met him, so you cut him out of caution.
Selecting a jury is arguably more of a subtractive process than an additive one - you want to identify good jurors, but equally or more so you want to identify bad ones. You’ll put some good ones on, but those are the most likely to get cut by the other side, so what you’re left with are mostly the ones neither side particualrly wants or doesn’t want, who don’t stand out either way particularly. It’s a mistake to think that these 40 or 50 strangers are all right thinking individuals like you are, and who will clearly see the rightness of you case. I like to think of it, oddly enough, as sort of like a message board. Just like most message boards, there are people whose opinions you mostly agree with, quite a few you find unobjectionable, some whose opinions are pretty mudane except for one hot button topic best avoided, a few whose opinions you strongly disagree with, and one or two whackjobs. It’s crucial to figure out who’s who, and who has the potential to sink your case.
I don’t want to give the impression that wanting to be on a jury is in all cases an absolute bar - if someone answered the question “who wants to be on this jury?” with “I wouldn’t mind, I’ve never done it before and it sounds interesting,” he probably won’t get cut based on that alone. However, if he raised his hand unbidden and said “excuse me, may I say something? I really, really, want to be on a jury, especially on a jury in a case like this. I feel like I can really help all of you out here, so make sure you put me on the jury, okay?”…would you want to roll the dice with that guy?
Why is volunteering a bad thing? It’s not like you are volunteering for a particular trial. I can see why that would be suspicious. But just volunteering to be tasked to any available trial?
It’s not at all bad (I once sort of wanted to be on a jury myself until I actually served), it’s just different from how most people view jury duty, so a lawyer trying a case might wonder why the person wanted to serve.
I guess I may never serve on a jury because that’s exactly how I feel 
I’m in my early 30’s, never been on a jury, got served 3 or 4 times. The closest I’ve ever been to a jury was when I was 18 and got called for the first time. I made it all the way inside the courtroom, got to sit in the jury box, but the every next move was the lawyer dismissing me.
I really really really want to be on a jury. I want to argue with people over the merits of the law. I think I can be impartial, as impartial as anyone can be who follows politics. Sure, one of my first questions to this form was about jury nullification and I think it should be taught to everyone, but so what? If a case didn’t have any big consequence, I could totally see myself just using cold hard facts
But I’m human. Don’t think that just because you’re a lawyer or a judge that you can bully me into a position that I think is wrong. I know about the 3 branches of government, I know about checks and balances. When one branch gets things wrong, like an anti-pot law, or an anti-assisted suicide law, it’s my duty to correct that
So can I be on your jury??? 
Roll the dice! After all, it’s just 50/50 that I’ll be on your side. Might as well go with the devil you know than the devil you don’t, right? Right??? 
Usually I would cut both devils and go with the bored housewife, but your conviction and strong sense of both duty and justice has convinced me, despite my overwhelming instinct to cut you faster than Jack the Ripper could cut a Whitechapel working girl. What the hell, if you ever end up on my panel, you’re on. Remember, if you do get cut, the other guy did it, so write him a series of strongly worded letters.
:smack: That reminds me. I have jury duty this month! If only I could remember when…
I don’t suppose they call and remind you just before, do they?
The best way to get out of jury duty is to want to be on one! I’ve always wanted to be on a jury. At one of my previous jobs, the employee agreement said that you would be paid for however long you were on a jury. When next called for jury duty, they asked for volunteers for an extra-long trial (might take six months) - I jumped up and volunteered! Then I found out that the dates were for a time when I already had plane tickets to go see my parents in Switzerland. They told me I could be excused and I went home. Didn’t end up on a jury that time. :mad:
Next time I was called, I was in a room with a big group of people. They called up 12 people (plus two alternates), and the attorneys and judge went through their rigmarole of tossing people off the jury. By the time there were done, there was only person left in the room who hadn’t been considered - that was me!
I haven’t been called for the past 10 or 15 years. Still never made it on a jury.
“These damn juries let criminals off on technicalities! I’ll get on a jury and keep 'em from letting crooks lose to prey on our society.”
“These damn juries are full of whitey’s, and they always side against any minority people. I’ll get on a jury and make sure the brothers get a fair chance.”
“These damn juries are full of men, who take the word of any bully over the poor abused woman. I’ll get on a jury, and make sure those men pay for their brutality.”
“These damn juries are full of old women, who believe any girl who flutters her eyelids and says ‘oh, that big man forced me’ and send some poor guy away as a rapist. I;ll get on a jury and make sure a man has a fair shot.”
The likelihood is that anyone who volunteers for jury duty has some motive like that. Not all, but most, so the system doesn’t take chances on them. While any of them might be somewhat accurate feelings, they all betray a tendency to pre-judge a situation based on personal feelings, rather than ONLY on the evidence presented. And that is prejudice, which the legal system wants to avoid.
I’ve only served on a jury once, which was a grandma-aged drug dealer in San Diego who was dealing meth that was pretty interesting.
I also made it into the jury box for a very lame trespassing/squatting case involving an old man living in a broken down RV sitting on a vacant lot that the previous owner didn’t have a problem with (scared away other questionable people from the lot), but the new owner did. Except the old man didn’t have the means to move the RV at that point. Fortunately the lawyers asked if anyone had a problem with the case and I volunteered that while I didn’t have all the details, I was fairly sure this was a waste of the court’s time and I got dismissed.
I get called like clockwork every two years, so I don’t know how the rest of you are getting called so infrequently…
That might hold true if one could pick the trial they were on, but AFAIK, jurists are chosen from a pool, and when you’re called for jury duty you have no idea of what particular trial they’ll want you for.
This brings to mind the gag in 30 Rock where Liz Lemon dresses up like Princess Leia to get dismissed from jury duty. Do people ever actually present themselves as weirdos to get dismissed?
I’ve never been called (and won’t be any time soon) because I haven’t registered to vote in my state–California–yet, hah. And I think they only choose from people who are registered to vote, right?
No, that’s not right. I know at least one person who received a summons despite not being a US citizen, although the person had a driver’s license.
Indeed. I can just imagine a jury stocked with some sort of weirdo jury fetishists.
I wish the last jury I had been on was like that. A good half of them just wanted to take a vote and go home within 20 minutes of being sent for deliberation. That really pissed me off.
Well, he was wrong (as Judges frequently are). Or at least, he would be wrong here in Minnesota. California might be different.
Having previously worked at county data processing on the computer systems that do jury selection & summonsing, I know something about the procedure.
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[li]We use voter registration lists, drivers license lists, and state Id (non-driver) lists as sources to select jurors. They were considering adding income tax & property tax returns to expand the pool; I don’t know if that was implemented.[/li][li]The lists are match-merged, so if you are both a registered voter & licensed to drive, you are NOT twice as likely to be chosen. (But that might not work, if your name is different on those lists.)[/li][li]The merged list is purged, removing people who have been convicted of a felony within the past 10(?) years, or who are still on parole/probation. Also removed are people who have actually shown up for jury duty within the past 3(?) years – just showing up gets you off the list for 3 years, even if you are never actually selected to serve on a jury. We also had lists of professions that we eliminated, because they were almost always challenged and didn’t end up serving on a jury. Examples were lawyers, elected officials, clergy, etc.[/li][li]The selections are random, from that merged list. So the chance of being selected is the same whether you came from the voter list, drivers license list, etc.[/li][li]While the selection is random, we had some overall checks to ensure that random chance didn’t leave us with get a jury pool too similar. For example, by age (under-30, 30-65, 65+), or by home location (urban, suburban, rural) – we didn’t want more than 2/3rds of the selected juror pool from just one of those groups. Same for male-female – we didn’t want a pool with more than 2/3rds the same gender. If it was, we held some of those for next week’s selection, and had the computer randomly select some more.[/li]
Note that this was just our pool of summonsed jurors. The ending pool was often skewed because of excused jurors; for example, young people were often excused because of college classes, middle-aged people excused because of work hardship, thus leaving a higher proportion of older, retired people in the jury pool.
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About the seriousness of not showing up when summonsed – that depends on the county Court. Ours took it quite seriously.
The people in the jury office were both reasonable, and quite persistent. So, for example, if you called them and said “I got this summons, but I’m a student taking classes – I need to be excused” they would respond “Oh sure, we can reschedule that – when is spring break at your school?”. Quite reasonable about postponing it to meet your schedule, but very persistent that you must eventually report for jury duty. Same with claiming that you were too busy at work – they would just ask when would there be a slow time at work, we can reschedule you for then.
As for just not showing up, they would recall you for the next week, and the week after that, with increasingly more emphatic letters. They would not actually send a deputy out to arrest you, but their policy was on the 3rd strike (3rd time not showing up when summonsed – 2nd time if they had rescheduled it for you) they would have the court issue an arrest warrant for you. The sheriff’s department seldom ever had time to actually serve those, but it went onto your record. So if you were ever pulled over for a traffic stop, went to renew your drivers license, to replace your license plates, get a copy of your birth certificate or other government document, etc., this would pop up, and you would be hauled off to jail. As they said, eventually we will get their attention.