"Congratulations!"Follow

I received a letter on Saturday congratulating me on my opportunity to serve my county on jury duty next month. I have never in my life been given jury duty, and I'm sort of excited. The letter said I have to show up at the court house on October 15th, then there's some automated number I have to call every night for a month or something to see if I'm selected.

I know I've seen threads similar to this before. Anyone know how long it might take that first day?

The one time I got summoned, I think I got out of there around 3pm or so.

That's crazy.

This is a pretty small town, too. And they pay you $10 per day, IIRC, so it's not much. ;) Though they probably won't pay me since I'm on salary and will be paid through my job no matter what.

Yeah, I got paid $10/day plus gas. I don't think I ever cashed that $13 check.
They also didn't make me wait to find out if I was selected. They told us that day.

More interesting than dressing up and acting crazy?

Point taken.

I'm not sure how typical my experience is, but when I was summoned for Jury duty I got out by about 11 am the first day; not being selected or interviewed for anything. There were perhaps 400 people there and less than 100 were called.

My understanding is that they need jurors available to be present at every case should it go to trial, but that the majority of cases settle out of court just before the trial, which leaves a plethora of unused jurors.

Edited, Sep 20th 2010 7:16pm by Allegory

This^ ***** criminals deciding to plea bargain, taking away all my power.

The time I was summoned I forgot to go. I called and rescheduled and forgot about it the second time as well. I have horrible short term memory, and this was during the time I was working for a crazy man with a pet goat in the office. I called again to apologize and reschedule and the nice lady told me not to worry about it and that was it. I figured I would have gotten into trouble or something >.< I'm sure they figured I would be a complete ditz and would have been dismissed anyways.

Ironically, I just got my jury summons. I report on October 25.

Generally it's for one day. You wait with the rest of the general jury pool waiting to see if you get assigned to a trial or not. If you don't, you're released and that's it. If you're assigned to a trial jury, then you have to see if you actually sit on the jury or not. There's a selection process that both sides participate in, where either side can ask the judge to remove you from the jury trial for pretty much any reason (they think you might not be fair for whatever reason). If you're removed, you're free to leave. If you're selected to actually sit on the jury, you can be there for however long the trial takes. On average, a civil trial can be 1-2 days. If it's a criminal trial maybe 2-3 days. If it's a complex civil trial (business litigation or wrongful death ) or a serious felony criminal trial (murder, etc.), you can be there for a couple of weeks or even months.

I usually get kicked off the jury trial because I work for an attorney and most attorneys know one another. So they try to get rid of each other's staff if they happen to be on the jury pool, simply because they know how much the attorneys need their staff. So it's a courtesy thing.

But I'll sit in the room for October 23 and go visit with the rest of the courtroom staff.

Edited, Sep 21st 2010 12:40pm by Thumbelyna

I really don't care if I ever get summoned for jury duty. I do wonder how they pick people though. I've never been called, but obviously others have been called multiple times. Do they just pick names out of a hat / RNG?