Yes. You’ll alert the judge during jury selection of the issue, and they should tell you what you need to do to call a break. The judge is going to want to know how often to expect this, and if it’s going to be every 10 minutes (extreme example) might just excuse you. In my experience, they’ll work with you if they can.
Been about 50 years, small town WI county courthouse. Probably the only murder trial before or since (except for Ed Gein).
I’ve been called like 4 times in the 15 years I’ve lived in New Jersey. I’ve never had to sit on a jury and actually I’ve only had to show up to the court house once IIRC. (You call or go online the morning of to see if your group needs to appear). I feel like it’s kind of a massive waste of time to have to sit for an entire day to maybe get called to one courtroom to not even be among the potential jurors to go through the voir dire process.
I was supposed to appear for jury duty on Monday, but I managed to get an excuse because my wife goes to the office and I have a flexible work from home arrangement where I watch my small children.
Sequestering juries is E-X-P-E-N-S-I-V-E. Judges will do almost anything to avoid doing it, including granting motions to change venue.
Overnight accommodations plus all meals for at least 14 (and maybe as many as 18, in my experience) for a period of several weeks or months, not uncommon for complex or high stakes trials, just isn’t a good use of taxpayer funds.
On the other hand, our Federal District is rather large, and if you’re called to jury duty from the outskirts of the district, they’ll pay for your hotel and I would guess a per diem too.
That’s true, good point. My experience is limited to a state court, and only one at that.
I completely agree about sequestrating a jury though. I’ve seen it done once in 35 years, and that was an organized crime trial. It’s very, very rare.
Well, jury duty accomplished (sort of).
I made the mistake of not reading the part of the summons about parking, and thus parked in the regular garage (a long walk from the courthouse, if you’re mobility-impaired as I am, temporarily), and did not park in the much-closer handicapped lot. My own fault. I’m glad I remembered my cane - largely not using it any more (broken foot back in mid April) but I was happy to have it.
They had a bunch of us sitting in a big jury room. About an hour after we got there, a bailiff read names and handed out numbers from 1 to 20; I was not on that list. Those 20 were taken off to a courtroom after a bit.
The rest of us, they said “there might be one more trial today, if so you’ll be sent there; if not, you’ll be held in reserve in case they can’t fill the jury with the first 20”.
Evidently the second trial, the state decided not to pursue, and they filled the jury for the first trial without needing to grab anyone else, so we were sent home about 12:30.
There was a speech at the beginning about “won’t you consider donating some of your 30 dollars to help fund the software and servers that do jury selection, cauze it really speeds things up and now you only have to be available 1 day instead of 2 weeks”. Being a brat, I declined. I assume they’ll mail the check to me, eventually (we were not remunerated yesterday).
The closest thing to excitement was seeing a couple of news vans, and what was basically a portable studio (awning, lights etc.) as I drove to the parking garage - and when I left, even more, plus some GROUPIES hanging out on the lawn in folding chairs. You see, this is the courthouse where the Depp / Heard libel trial was being heard, and arguments had settled the previous Friday, so there was some home a verdict would be reached that day.
I am REALLY glad I wasn’t called for service 2 months earlier. Imagine spending 2 months on that jury.
We were told that having spent our day there, we are now exempt from being called for 3 years. We’re in a large, densely-populated county, so I guess they can afford to do that - somewhere with less population might call people more often perhaps.
Though I guess it’s conceivable I could get called by a Federal court at some point. Nobody I know has ever had that happen.
I don’t know about your state, but in California we get bupkus the first day. I had to log in the second day and got my munificent pay for that. But they’ve never had the nerve to hit me up for a donation when they are paying a pittance for the aggravation.
I was just summoned for the first time in my life. Apparently I have to call with my juror number every Monday for 3 weeks to see if I have to report. My employer will excuse the days in court, but not the day before and I work nights. So I guess I will be expected to drive around 30 miles and serve without sleeping on the first day. Says we get 30 bucks a day, which means I lose a couple hundred a day and get to pay an extra $10 or so in gas. Looking forward to seeing how it goes but it will be pretty stressful.
At least some of you get paid. I’m required to sign away my jury stipend because I’m a county employee and they aren’t about to let us double-dip.
I work for a city, and they do that, too. The court in our area gives bus passes to jurors and validates city parking structure tickets. That didn’t help me because I work a block from the court and the city pays monthly parking for us already, but I approve.
My last jury service was bizarre, in that the trial took three days, plus extra time for voir dire, literally hundreds of people-hours, including jurors, judge, lawyers, bailiffs, witnesses etc, all to settle a matter concerning a clerk embezzling 30 dollars from a convenience store (the camera of which was unclear as to whether she did or did not put the 30 dollars into the cash register. We watched that film a dozen or so times.) I would have gladly settled it by giving the owner of the store a 20 bill and a 10 the first morning and be done with it.
A lot of employers do something like that - requiring you to remit the money to them, if they pay you. Which is kind of chintzy - that 30 bucks or whatever is supposed to cover the hassle, if nothing else.
That might be grounds for requesting a hardship deferral. I don’t think they care about the loss of wages - but you could certainly argue that. AND the bit about needing to work all night then go to the courthouse in the morning, is actually dangerous.
One state’s cite:
“If you do not qualify for any of the Virginia statutory exemptions listed above but seriously think that attending jury selection would cause you undue hardship, you can always submit a jury duty excuse letter with your response to the summons, and ask to be excused. It will be at the discretion of the court that summoned you whether to accept or deny your excuse.”
Of course, this cite isn’t reassuring about your need to work the night BEFORE (though it says they cannot make you work the night AFTER):
“No person who is summoned and appears for jury duty for four or more hours, including travel time, in one day shall be required to start any work shift that begins on or after 5:00 p.m. on the day of his appearance for jury duty or begins before 3:00 a.m. on the day following the day of his appearance for jury duty. Any employer violating the provisions of this section is guilty of a Class 3 misdemeanor.”
And here is a summary of laws by state. Only Tennessee had something explicitly saying you could not be forced to work a night shift BEFORE your service.
I did some reading about the number of jurors in my jurisdiction. Supposedly for a civil case up to x dollars, there will be 5 jurors (they’ll call in 11, and each side can dismiss up to 3); for a larger civil case, it’s 7 (13, and each side dismisses 3). For a felony, they call in 20 jurors, and will ultimately seat 12 of them. So the case that was starting up when I was there would have been a felony.
Interestingly, they only call in jurors Monday through Wednesday - presumably the trials may well cover Thursdays and Fridays, but they don’t start new ones on those days.
Those numbers seem low. Assuming the parties get three peremptory challenges each, you need more than six “extras” to account for those excused for hardship of “for cause.” Most courts also seat at least one alternate. The exact numbers will vary, but I’d think you’d need at least 30 to be confident you could seat a jury of 12.
I agree.
Here’s the page that talks about it. Look for “how are jurors chosen” for civil, and criminal cases. It’s a little vague on how things are handled in terms of alternates or if you run out of prospective jurors before they’ve filled the panel. Those of us who were not in the initial 20 were told that if they did not get a full group of jurors, some of us might get called in for that trial, so that handles the question of “at least 30”.