I’ve never been sent a summons for jury service before. It’s for petit juror, and is scheduled for May 28. I was hoping to take a trip for research to Europe from June 21 - about July 21. Then I start school again as soon as I get home through November.
I could postpone, but I would hate to miss any day of school. Am I like 99.9% safe to just get it out of the way and buy my plane tickets for June 21?
Yes, it is very safe. The judge will ask you if you have any trips planned, and will not schedule you for a trial that might take a long time if you do (the chances of getting assigned to a long trial are pretty slim anyways).
The judge might not like it that the trip was booked after the summons for jury duty.
The question of when you booked your ticket is seldom asked. There are plenty of short trials they can put someone on.
A month after? No reasonable judge would have problems with you booking a trip for a month after jury duty is supposed to end. It is true that there are unreasonable judges out there, but most of them realize that not all people can be expected to drop everything for a month at a time.
If you get called for a big long case (which is vanishingly unlikely anyways), there will be tons of other people getting dismissed for not being able to be gone from their life for a month as well. Which does mean that jurors on big cases tend to not be very representative of the population, which may be a problem, but it’s not related to the one being discussed here.
So in the unlikely event that I am selected for a long case, they would ask me if I have any major plans set like business/school travel?
Here’s http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=751037 a recent thread asking about a trip shortly after jury duty. You’ll learn a lot reading it.
The biggest thing you’ll learn is the best answer for your questions comes directly from your local jury administrator. Every county in every state is slightly different.
The odds on a problem for your scenario are very, very low. But if you want to reduce that to zero, call your local authorities and ask.
Not the date of the trip, the date of the* booking* of the trip.
His jury duty starts May 28, and he wants to go on a trip starting June 21. So 3 weeks later. To reiterate, I would have no problem doing that. Not all jurors are expected to be able to give up 3 weeks of their life for a case. In the very unlikely event you are put in a jury pool for a case that is expected to last 3 weeks, they will excuse anyone who has any indication of having stuff to do soon.
If you’re worried, does your locality have an automatic deferment? Last time I got called into jury duty here in Chicago, I just had to call the number and ask the automated system to defer me. It said that I would get another notice in six months (or something like that) with a new date to come in. I never did.