Back in the old days, the jury was gathered from your village, town, etc. (Whole other thread on a “jury of your peers”). Can one get out of jury duty (not that I would ever dream of trying to get out of jury duty, this is strictly hypothetical) by not having a car? Or how about if one only has one car and one’s spouse needs it to get to work? I live in L.A. county. L.A. county is very big. You see “L.A. County Line” signs in really bizarre places, like the top of mountains, the middle of the desert, by the women’s bathroom at concerts, etc.
So what’s the SD?
I had to serve on Jury Duty while living in LA County, and I didn’t have a car. (And yes, isn’t it bizarre how LA County seeps in just about everywhere!) I lived in Glendale, (which is part of LA County) and had to take the bus (about an hour or more ride) to the downtown LA courthouse on Spring Street. It never occurred to me to beg off by saying I didn’t have a car, but I doubt such an excuse would be accepted. You might be able to ask about serving Jury Duty closer to home, though. (Hypothetically…)
I got out of Jury Duty after one day. The building had these weird lights that emitted a high-pitched sound that gave me a horrible headache. Also, I was flying to New York in a few weeks, and was worried about getting trapped on a trial and missing my trip. The Jury ladies had no problem with that, and excused me. This was quite a few years ago, regulations may have changed since then.
Last time my mother was picked for jury duty, she just called them and said she could not afford to do it. They excused her.
Don’t wear pants to jury selection. That should get you excused.
I always just say that I have a personal friend on the police force, and that he told me that the police never arrest anyone unless they are sure that person is guilty.
Work on saying it with a straight face.
I was just excused from civil court here in B. C. because I already bought non-refundable plane tickets. Other reasons include illness, old age, and self-employment.
The bus thing might work if you live in the Outback, and far from mass transit, ie it was a hardship to come in. But, otherwise, no. But, you don’t want to “get out” of doing Jury duty.
I have only been called to jury duty once. At the time I was donating breast milk to the hospital for two motherless preemies. My own son was almost weened and it wouldn’t have been a problem for him, but the other babies couldn’t handle formula and there were only four of us keeping them in milk. They excused me, but it must have been one of the stranger requests they’ve had. “Sorry, but I am busy nursing some else’s kids” I wish they would call me now, though, because I think it’s a worthwhile thing to do.
A lot of it has to do with the judge’s discretion.
You might search here, there should be a couple hundred messages on Jury Duty.
In 99, I got called three times in one month. Lol. Can’t use deafness as an excuse anymore.
My experience has been that you can use the lack of a car as a hardship to get jury duty postponed but not delayed. The court will recognize that it is a major inconvenience for you, but that said, they will still see it as your civic duty to serve and just give you more time to make the arrangements to attend.
I had to do jury duty earlier this year and though I grumbled the whole way to the court house in San Diego, once I got there I got on a cool case (put away a drug dealer) and actually enjoyed it. Besides, it was a nice ‘free vacation’ from work.
Once you show up for jury duty, in California, the new laws are that if you don’t get on a jury after a day, they excuse you. And that is easy enough to do. In my jury selection group, people got out of it either because they had previously been convicted of a crime themselves, knew a victim of a violent crime, felt stongly for or against drug legalization, said they’d have trouble convicting a woman, etc. Any little bias will get you thrown off the jury. So all you have to do is come with a lame excuse when your pool of people goes in during the jury selection phase and you’ll get out pretty easily. Go through that 2-3 times during the day, and you’re done.
I’m sure this will explode at some point into a debate about the merits of serving jury duty, and while I enjoyed it and would certainly do it again, I fully understand some people hate it and have jobs that would collapse without them (or worse yet, the work just piles up when you are gone and makes your return from jury duty a nightmare). Just for the record though, you have my blessings if you are one of these people and want to ditch out.
I was called for jury duty exactly once, less than a month after I turned 18. I mean, I had just registered to vote and registered with selective service…they jumped on me but quick. However, at the time, I was a 6-hour drive from my New Mexico home, at a pre-college program, with no car of my own. My folks wrote a letter, and I was excused. Haven’t been summoned in the 9 years since then.
Honestly, I would have liked to go…at the time, a fella was coming up for trial who had killed 3 of his family members and 2 police officers in a hours-long standoff. Now that could have been interesting.
The one time I got called where I actually had to show up, was in Abilene, Texas.
The case involved a local lawyer who had been arrested for possession of a significant quantity of marijuana that he had apparently taken as a fee. The trial ended in mistrial because the state’s star witness forgot to tell the DA about some critical information.
One of the potential jurors knew half the people involved in the investigation, since she was married to a cop. She was excused, as was I.
Robin
Hijack alert!
As of a few years back in NY State there were zillions of professions that had successfully lobbied since the beginning of time to have their members automatically excused from jury service. Some of these sort-of made sense (like lawyers) and others were absurd, inexplicable holdovers from bygone days (like prosthesis (sp?) makers and funeral directors).
These willy-nilly exceptions rankled the crap out of so many people that the legislature and/or governor abolished ALL of them. Every single last one!
Sure enough, last year the mayor of NYC, of all people, was called for jury duty. He was not excused and served on a jury for a few days, if I recall.
Hmmmm…good ideas. Not that I would ever, ever, think of trying to get out of jury duty-
Thanks Yar, can I use your name on my next summons?
It’s only a week of showing up usually. And it’s easier to get excused from each case than from duty in general.
More seriously: About seven years ago my mother, then 63, got a summons for jury duty in downtown Los Angeles–in the building where the O. J. Simpson (superior court) trial was. (We live 15 miles away in Gardena.) She totally avoids the freeways and went somewhere downtown in a car alone once, in 1976. I was working at a legal clinic in the Silver Lake area, in 1993; I brought this up to one of the lawyers, who ghostwrote a letter for my Mom to the jury office. Her request was honored and she was transferred to the courthouse in Torrance, which is local. Now, she is 70 and doesn’t have to present any excuses not to go downtown. (I had service in the Metropolitan courthouse the week the Lakers won the championship! One day I had to ride home ona Blue Line car full of noisy Laker fans!)
If (for some reason) you do want out of jury duty, show up with your hair in cornrows. The prosecution will dismiss you every time. I am not joking.
I just finished my JD stint 3 weeks ago- I recommend going through with it, even though we wound up deliberating for 3 days on a very straightforward stolen car case (more accurately an “unauthorized use of a vehicle, receiving Stolen Property, and Destruction of Property” case) because the prosecution did a very shoddy job. We found out afterwards that was mainly due to the fact that she had gotten the case the morning of jury selection!
I told the lawyers that I grew up thinking “All Landlords Must Die”. I was off jury duty within the hour.
I knew a woman who was summoned to appear for jury duty in Culver City (where the Sony studios are). As a prospective juror in a crimninal case, she was excused when the judge asked if she had any relatives who were policemen–and, as it turned out, she had a brother on the force in Culver City. She was excused and reassigned to a courthouse in Beverly Hills.
I’d also like to know if the criteria for selecting federal jurors have changed since the 50s; in Ready for the Plaintiff, attorney Melvin Belli wrote that, unlike state juries, federal juries are composed of people with higher incomes and position in the community, which hardly seems to meet the “impartial” requirement of the Sixth Amendment.