Oh, Kentucky. That’s about the 100th reason not to live there.
As I said upthread, I tried that and got the run-around. The run-around was, by the way, peppered with threats.
Appalachian Kentucky. It could be worse, though. I’ve only had to actually go in the once; a former coworker got on the grand jury next county over and had to go in the first Wednesday of every month for what was described to her as “up to 24 months.” She moved away 10 months into it, so I don’t know how long they would actually have kept her. Cost her a ton of money, since our boss didn’t pay for jury duty. More populous counties with busier court dockets have much shorter service times, usually a max of 30 days.
Grand jury service is different from trial jury service, because as you said it goes on for a while. But the one time I had to serve on a criminal trial jury, the judge excused anyone who would not be paid for the time of service. (He did ask them where they worked. I wondered if he had a master list of companies that did and did not pay for jury duty and was checking if the person was lying, or was going to call up the employer and encourage them to pay jury service in the future.)
I got a jury summons the other week. My day is set for the 5th of Sep, and so I’ve got to do the “call the courthouse after 5 PM on the 4th to find out if you have to show up.”
Good lord, I hope I don’t have to suffer through a year of doing that every evening if I keep getting a “not today…try tomorrow!”
Thankfully, I’ve got a job where I can get away with missing a day on short notice, but it still seems like a big hassle to have to do that.
My county is one day/one trial but they actually treat the jurors pretty well. The jury room has nice seating, big windows and a dark area with TV sets and a separate eating area with vending. It also has a whole bank of computer terminals.
The last time I was called I was having a classic bad morning and I ended up straggling in a little bit late and missing one of the pieces of paper that I was supposed to bring.
So instead of sitting in the big room with everyone while the court officer gave instructions and collected forms I went to the little jury office to see if they could replace the juror card I had forgotten. They were really nice and I just hung out in there while they replaced the card and helped me with the rest of the forms and gave me the instructions-- ( not my intent but they were like " You’re already here, no need to go back outside, we’re nicer and we like company".)
Then I got picked for voir dire and while I’m usually pretty good at not getting picked this time it was different. The questioning pretty much consisted of " do you speak English?" and “are you free for the next two days?”. A NO answer to either of these questions would’ve raised a whole new set of issues, I think one guy answered NO to the “are you free for the next two days?” and was told if he couldn’t serve he should’ve taken a postponement and was made to go back downstairs and do just that, so that backfired.
Basically they seated the first 8 jurors they talked to ( 6 jurors and 2 alternates ). I was an alternate. One of the women was a neighbor of the judge but that didn’t matter, it wouldn’t have mattered unless they had a close relationship of some sort. She wasn’t trying to get out of jury duty though, earlier she threw the court officer for a loop by requesting extra days of jury duty.
It was a civil case, the plaintiff was a homeless man suing the Salvation Army for damages due to an assault that happened to him after he was turned away from one of their shelters for showing up drunk. The guy really had no case but was mentally unstable and had refused to settle.
In addition to the whole jury non-selection thing, both attorneys were very young and neither had ever tried a case before - I think both law firms knew the case was a throwaway and were using it for practice. The judge was a real nice fatherly type and ended up gently helping both attorneys on procedural points, and he went off the record several times to elaborate on some of these legal and procedural points, which was actually really interesting.
And they bought us lunch. Technically they weren’t supposed to send out for food unless it was for a deliberating jury, but it was a horrible rainy day and I think they felt bad about wasting our time on this case…so we got our free food.
The plaintiff lost, BTW.
I did not try to get released but I was released for being frank about my personal views. The case was the reward phase for a car accident where a young man was seeking money from an old woman who rear ended him. In the selection phase I mentioned that I have a hard time buying into Pain and Suffering settlements that are extremely large if they can’t be substantiated by medical proof. Oddly enough the plaintiff asked that I be removed.
No, they didn’t ask that. Everybody was asked for their name, occupation, news sources (which I guess could be a proxy for how you vote), whether or not you’d served on a jury before, and if so, whether or not you’d reached a verdict (but not what the verdict was.)
Then the lawyers asked a lot of questions of everybody, show of hands type things. They might drill in with a couple jurors, but it was 50 people at the start, so most people didn’t say a whole lot during this phase. The prosecutor asked a lot of questions about whether or not we’d be able to trust police officers and if we’d be able to convict even if we didn’t agree with the law. The defense attorney asked a lot about how people felt about the reliability of eye witness testimony and how we felt about the homeless (the defendant was homeless.)
I think there were a lot of opportunities to get out of it if you wanted out, and the judge made clear that you couldn’t get in trouble for your voir dire answers (unless it was found that you withheld information.) So saying you couldn’t convict if you disagreed with the law was fine, and would probably have gotten you off the jury. Saying “none of your business” probably wouldn’t have gone over too well.
Some themes I remember:
Can you set aside whatever opinion you may have on the subject matter at hand and make a decision based only on the evidence?
If the arresting officer was the only witness for the prosecution, would that be enough for you or would you need more (something along those lines)?
Have you ever served on jury and if so, did the jury reach a verdict?
I’m in NYC. If you serve on a jury they actually give you 6 or so years off from even being called. It goes by fast.
once you are summons to jury duty the only law you can break is not showing up…upon which an arrest warrant will appear for you for not following a court order…when you show up the whole lot for you will be asked to take the jury oath. DO NOT TAKE THE OATH… the judge might ask if any one did not take the oath, raise your hand he will talk to you in person, if the judge does not ask this question he will later ask for people who might have exceptions ,when you get in front of him say"i did not swear to the jury oath as i was afraid i might give up my right of “jury nullification” he will probable give you a lecture etc.etc.and will try even to intimidate you .
, but he will probably ask you to sit down while a staffer goes an looks up jury nullification. after a little while you will be asked to leave.jury duty over…
Bullshit.
This is ridiculous. Just for starters, I assure you that they’re not going to need a staffer to look up jury nullification. It’s very common knowledge. If you act like a smartass as described above, you won’t like the results.
I recently did jury duty in Canberra, Australia. There’s no arguing about whether you are suitable or not. You get a chance to excuse yourself prior to selection, the vibe was pissweak reasons are quickly dispensed with. Each panel (about 50-60 people) serves for two weeks, if you are selected for more than one case in that two weeks, so be it.
Once in court, they read out the interested parties, you can opt out if you know any of the participants, I assume the judge has to be satisfied with your reasoning though.
Then there is random selection process (numbers drawn from a box), each side’s lawyers get to give eight jurors the boot with out justification, you front up, they say “Challenge”, you sit back down. If you’re not challenged, you’re in, no further mucking about.
I got $766 for 2 call ins without selection, and the four days of the trial I sat on. Everyone gets the allowance, which is based on days called in and hours per day.
Does saying “I hate every race including my own” work?
Wow. They actually paid you like a human being. My county pays $25 for the whole time.
Not enough for some
I am quite surprised at the success of evading service, they seemed fairly inflexible from the information given to us.
When I participated in voir dire several years ago in DC, they excused one prospective juror extremely quickly because one of her relatives had recently been imprisoned and she thought her call to jury duty was the system’s way of getting back at her family.
I was just called in Montgomery County, MD and went through voir dire on a burglary case. That took forever, since they had to go through screening everyone related to law enforcement or someone in the legal profession, plus everyone who had ever experienced burglary. The two prospective jurors who got excused for cause were people who had experienced numerous burglaries/robberies.
Yeah. I’ve heard judges go through all the bullshit reasons people give to try to get out of jury service. Some of them didn’t sound very pleased by them.
It amazes me that some people think they know more than judges who have no doubt been involved with hundreds if not thousands of jury cases as judges and lawyers before that.
A nice fat contempt citation would no doubt teach them a lesson.
I love being on jury duty.
Once I just played a lot of bridge in the pool because none of us playing ever got sent up. Slow week I guess.
Two other times, I went up, got picked and was the foreman on both.
One time I was sent up but no picked. I think because there was an used car salesman & I told the judge that since my
Dad had been a used car salesman in the past & know all the sneaky stuff they do that I would have a hard time being impartial.
Another time I was not picked because I told the judge that both attorneys were way over the line in putting forth their sides of the case during jury selection . Judge tossed me on that one also.
It is the judge that tossed me, never the lawyers. This was in Oklahoma in the 80’s & 90’s. I did not know the judge could throw you off. I knew they could deal with excuses. Well actually the court clerk did most of that when you checked into the pool each day.
Jury duty is a blast. 
Depends on your location. For years, the local prosecutor was my attorney. Didn’t get me out of Grand Jury Duty. Neither did the fact that my uncle was a local city cop, now a probation officer, and a cousin is a local state trooper. Shoot, the other attorneys in down act as assistant prosecutors when they aren’t being defense attorneys.
Jury duty is the one thing we are asked to do as a civic duty as a citizen. Getting called on every so often to keep this society going and try to keep it a just society, doesn’t seem like that big of a sacrifice.