Hmm. I received a jury duty notice last week from Los Angeles County for one of the previous tenants of my current apartment. Since it had someone else’s name on the outside, I left it unopened, wrote “No longer at this address, return to sender” and dropped it back in the mail. Is he going to get in trouble now? For what, failure to appear or failure to notify of an address change? Was there something else I should have done?
Wikipedia informs me that there are four elements which must be present for contempt of court to exist;
- Existence of a lawful order
- The potential contemnor’s knowledge of the order
- The potential contemnor’s ability to comply
- The potential contemnor’s failure to comply
Given that;
- The order to appear for jury service was a lawful order
- The OP has acknowledged in this forum his receipt of same
- The OP has not indicated any inability to present himself for jury service
- The OP has acknowledged that he threw the summons in the trash
I’d say that a finding of contempt would be justified.
Well, then, go ahead and ignore it. It’s also important to remember that when you get hauled into the courtroom by a sheriff, to note whether or not the flags have gold fringes on them. If they do, it is an Admiralty Court, and you are not subject to their rulings.
Seriously, you have two important things to do at this point.
#1 - Do everything that is listed on this latest letter. Fall on the mercy of the court, apologize profusely for “accidentally” throwing away the first letters. They don’t really want to throw you in jail, they just want a juror.
#2 - Locate the person who said that you could ignore Jury Duty letters. Cockpunch this person.
Jury duty’s not all that horrible. Just go, and bring a good book or two and whatever else you need to keep yourself busy, because you will almost certainly be doing a lot of sitting around in the jury pool room unless and until you are seated in a trial.
I don’t know how it works in your county, but in L.A. you don’t have to be there more than one day unless you are assigned to a case (“assigned” includes the jury selection process). Around here getting excused has become much more difficult and you can’t weasel out anymore just because you have an Important Job. A few years ago I was on a panel with the chief project engineer of the Metro Gold Line which was then being built. Neither of us made it past voir dire on that case, but like me he still had to show up. The upshot is that you’ll find a broad mix of people there in terms of backgrounds, experiences, and education. Gone are the days when juries were stereotypically made up of just retirees or younger people too clueless to escape service–if it ever was true.
– nm (Duplicate post) –
No, AK84 isn’t licensed in any state, nor should he be, as he lives in some exotic land where football is played with a round ball.
Gold fringes. Admiralty court. Love it!
Speaking of getting hauled in by a sheriff, I recall a news story from some rural jurisdiction where the sheriff hauled people off the street for jury duty. Apparently they just had a lot of business at the Courthouse that week, and they needed more jurors.
I showed this thread to my wife, who raised an interesting question. Is there any chance the OP could be arrested if he does show up? Would it be safe for him to show up and apologize, or does he need a lawyer? Are there any attorneys here who can comment, and are licensed to practice in California?
That said, I too am surprised at the appearance of the letter. I’d have expected that it would have the applicable Court’s letterhead, at least.
It does. See top where you can just make out “office of the jury commissioner”. Most judicial agencies don’t use fancy rag letterhead, if that’s what you mean, because they are not trying to impress clients.
He qualified (and practices law?) in England.
In California, jurors can be called from voter registration or drivers’ licensing lists. He could get in trouble if he was called based on his driver’s license address, but he’s not obliged to update his voter registration until he’s actually going to vote elsewhere (assuming he is registered at all.)
He won’t get in trouble anyway, because the courts have neither the time nor the inclination to update DMV address lists.
So was the proffer of a professional opinion on an issue involving California law just a very bad joke that I happened to miss? Because a smilie or some other tip off wouldn’t have gone amiss in that case.
It’s probably good advice.
ORLY? Then maybe you’ll answer the other question **AK84 **has chosen to be silent on?
I mean the “don’t ignore jury summons” part.
Oh. The same advice echoed by every other post in the thread. Check.
When I was in court one time, on a Tuesday morning after a long weekend. The first poor guy drug up had been incarcerated since Friday afternoon, leg shackles the whole nine, and he was pissed off.
He got pulled over for running a stop sign or something stupid and had a warrant out for skipping jury duty.
He was pissed because he figured he had lost his job since he was supposed to work all weekend, and second he was pissed because he had requested a change of venue to a different court, it had been granted and he showed and served.
The judge was a bit flustered, had one of the secretaries fly out and make some phone calls.
The secretary came back about 10 minutes later, and it was true, he had served. The judge was PISSED off. They held him for 4 days for skipping jury duty, and he had served. The judge suggested the guy get a lawyer and sue.
You don’t mess around with that stuff. If you don’t want to or can’t… fill out the form saying you can’t. Here its a 3 month ordeal, once a week for 3 months, I got called, my time was going to be over a summer when I was going to be gone for 7 of the 12 weeks, I filled out the form and got my “Excusal Granted” post card, its hanging on the wall.
I’m guessing the guy that told you that you could ignore it, either doesn’t like you, or is in
and out of the court system frequently and doesn’t even notice that they ignore that he didn’t show for jury duty.
Well, he is a lawyer in his own country, apparently, and he did tell the OP to go see a lawyer. How is that not good advice?
I’m not familiar with CA law but since neither is AK84, I’d willing to bet that falls under the rubric of ‘overkill.’
Who gave you such crappy advice?
To whom are you asking what?
That was the point, it was a joke. >_<