In Curb Your Enthusiasm, Larry wears a Seinfeld Jacket when called for jury duty because he says, courts hate celebrities on juries and will try to dismiss him as soon as possible.
Ok, I can guess they are afraid the celebrity will distrat the other jury peeps, and influence them, but is this really true? Or would they just treat Tom Cruise like anybody else?
Usually, one or both attorneys want the trial to go as smoothly and quietly as possible. Having your juror, your client, and your case on the cover of US Weekly, and the facts of his case on page 4, is neither smooth nor quiet. Who needs unnecessary scrutiny?
Then there’s the awe factor - you want the rest of the jurors to make up their minds based on the facts, not what Juror #5 thinks; or worse yet, vote the opposite way than Juror #5 because they hate their last movie or the facts of their last divorce.
Seems unfair though, wouldn’t Tom Cruise want to be able to serve on a jury like everyone else?
If he insisted, wouldnt’ the judge feel guilty not letting him do his fair share?
Cmon make these stars serve
Yes i’m sure someone who makes millions a year wants to be sequestered on a jury. :rolleyes:
As far as I know, no one except Pauly Shore wants to serve on a jury, lol.
Seriously? Some of us want to serve our civic duty.
What the juror wants is basically irrelevant.
In a trial, each side has the right to dismiss a certain number of jurors for any reason, or no reason at all. Usually, they do this when a juror expresses an unfavorable bias. But, if they’re worried that Kim Kardashian (for example) is going to turn an otherwise-unremarkable DUI trial into a circus, neither side will want her on the jury, and one of them will use a peremptory challenge to dismiss her.
What a potential juror might want is secondary to ensuring a fair and impartial trial.
I was responding to somebody stating that nobody ever wants to be on a jury.
Quite true. And even some celebrities do:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/campaigns/keyraces2000/stories/giuliani090199.htm
http://articles.nydailynews.com/2011-01-20/news/27096160_1_jury-duty-elena-kagan-harvard-law-school
http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/01/24/5909301-political-celebs-reporting-for-jury-duty-
Well, if officially a jury is trial by “his/her peers”, then you should keep celebrities on call and whenever a famous person themself is the accused - e.g. O.J. Simpson - they could call 12 fellow celebrities as their peers. 
I know a TV reality show pitch when I read one.
It’s good press to at least show up; it shows that the politician is One of the People, after all, and should sacrifice his time and income the same as the regular schlubs. 
In my county, the jury commissioner has a certain amount of discretion in excusing potential jurors. When I had jury duty in 2006, one of our county commissioners was also part of the same pool. He was excused once it was established that he was, in fact, the commissioner. The logic was two-fold. First, county commissioners know the judges fairly well. Second, elected officials tend to have publicly-stated positions on crime, and therefore can’t demonstrate impartiality. I don’t think we have very many world-famous celebrities registered to vote (or licensed to drive) here, so I don’t know how that would play out. I just know about the elected officials.