Re: [OT] Judge reams out people avoiding jury duty

On May 20, 2025 at 7:03:41 PM PDT, "Rhino" <no_offline_contact@example.com>
wrote:

On 2025-05-20 9:40 PM, BTR1701 wrote:

 On May 20, 2025 at 5:45:58 PM PDT, "Rhino" <no_offline_contact@example.com>
 wrote:
 

 A judge in Hamilton, Ontario gathered a whole lot of people who had
 failed to turn up for jury duty and demanded to know why.
 
 
 
https://www.thespec.com/news/crime/hamilton-courtroom-fail-to-obey-jury-duty-summons/article_6719b3d0-6d16-58bc-801e-62bf15b3fed1.html
 
 I've only been called once and I showed up. The defendant made a last
 minute decision to plead guilty and the whole jury pool of 250 was
 dismissed so I wasn't there very long.
 
 I'm under the impression that most Americans feel that only fools fail
 to wiggle out of jury duty. Is this true?

 
 I'd actually enjoy serving on a jury, especially now that I'm retired and
have
 time to kill. Even when I was working, the FedGov's policy is to pay you the
 whole time you're on jury duty as if you were at work, so you don't lose any
 money and you get (potentially) a week out of the office. A lot of people
 aren't so lucky and don't get paid while on a jury. Most, if not all, states
 have laws that prohibit an employer from firing you for jury duty but they
 don't have to pay you while you're on one.

Interesting. I think employers in this country have to pay you for the
time you are on the jury but it may not be your normal pay. It may just
be minimum wage, which would be a major cut for people with good jobs.
When I told my employer about my summons, they assured me it wouldn't be
a problem for them but it was inconvenient for me because I was working
an evening shift that ended around midnight so I didn't get my full
night's sleep before showing up for the jury pool.

 
 When I retired, I embarked on something I’d wanted to do for years and
packed
 up the car and just started lazily driving around the country,
state-by-state,
 staying in various places, sometimes a week at a time, to see all the
sights.
 L.A. to Key West, Florida to Maine, etc. The trip took me a month and a
half.
 

That's all? I can imagine a trip like that lasting years.
 

 When I finally returned home, I found a long-expired summons for jury duty
in
 my accumulated mail. I called the number on the summons and explained what
had
 happened. The woman looked up the number on my summons and said it was no
 problem, they'd just cancel it in the system and issue a new summons for me
 since I was home now and being retired had no work conflicts with serving.
And
 a few days later, a new summons showed up.

 
Clearly, there are *some* reasons that are considered acceptable for not
answering the summons and you hit on one of them ;-)
 

 I went and got eliminated the
 moment both sides discovered I was a lawyer.
 

 
Is being a lawyer a get-out-of-jury-duty card in every trial?

No, but both sides generally don't like people in the jury room that can both
explain the law to the other jurors and tell them all the legal tricks that
lawyers pull to keep evidence away from the jury.

In CA, there are, however, exceptions written into the law that they have no
discretion about granting. (Being a lawyer isn't one of them.) If you meet
them, it's an automatic pass.

One of them is that you can decline to serve if you're a certified peace
officer (cop) and they have a whole list of like 20 different types of cops
that qualify, everything from a standard beat cop to a fish and game warden,
but federal agents are nowhere on that list so I still had to go when I got a
summons back in 2016.

I figured I'd go in, fill out the background questionnaire and when the
lawyers realized I was a federal cop, they'd kick me immediately, but I
actually ended up serving on the jury. I was stunned. During voir dire,
neither the prosecution nor the defense seemed to have any problem with me
being both a lawyer and police. (It was an aggravated DUI case.)

Even the judge, who has everyone's forms up on the bench, was perplexed. As
they were about to move on to the next potential juror, she stopped them, then
asked me if I would have any problem presuming the defendant innocent given my
background in law enforcement. She was obviously trying to signal to the
defense that I was a cop in case he missed it. I said I felt I could and the
defense attorney, who must have been fresh off the set of LAW & ORDER, still
asked me no questions and didn't object at all.

So I ended up getting picked for the jury. My boss didn't believe me. He
thought for sure I was just saying I got picked so I could take a few days
off. He even showed up in the courtroom to watch one morning of testimony.

(We found the guy guilty.)

Do they at least make sure you don't have a criminal record when they compile
their
lists of prospective jurors?

I would assume so. They do ask you about any arrests or convictions you've had
on the questionnaire. I don't imagine they just take people's word for it when
they say no, though.

What about language? If you don't have
fluency in the language the court is using, are you automatically
disqualified from serving or do they find an interpreter for you?

In my trial, the judge excused an ancient Chinese lady from serving who could
barely speak English.