Jury service

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Has anyone been 'called up'? What are the legalities of being paid/not being paid whilst on jury service?

― Pinkpanther (Pinkpanther), Thursday, 8 May 2003 11:34 (twenty-two years ago)

My mum got called up last summer and ended up on a three-week murder trial! Unfortunately she's a supply teacher and it was during August so there was no remuneration as she wouldn't have technically been working and wasn't contracted to earn during that month.

― Nick Southall (Nick Southall), Thursday, 8 May 2003 11:36 (twenty-two years ago)

I got a leter, it got cancelled twice then I went, spent 2 days sitting around and when the names got pulled out of the hat I wasn't picked, phew (it was a horrible rape case and I had to listen to gory details, before I was even picked!)
You get paid, it's like completely against the law no to pay you.

― smee (smee), Thursday, 8 May 2003 11:37 (twenty-two years ago)

for the pareticularly gory details are there any oportunities for councelling afterwards?

― james (james), Thursday, 8 May 2003 11:41 (twenty-two years ago)

Got called up and was interviewed for one trial (drunk driving) and of course didn't get picked. Then I was sent home about noon. My company compensates for jury duty, so I wasn't elligible for state compensation. The specifics vary from state to state, but if you have a job and the job doesn't compensate, the state will give you a usually measly bit money for your trouble.

― fletrejet, Thursday, 8 May 2003 11:41 (twenty-two years ago)

BUT if your employer refuses to continue paying you for your period in court (which they are entitled to do), the jury service people only pay you something like £59 a day.

This looks like quite a good page of reference.

I got called up in 1999, and ended up juring for one and a half days out of the ten you're obliged to be available for. Take a book, seriously - my service was during Wimbledon fortnight, but you wouldn't believe how quickly I got bored of tennis. Fortunately I became chums with a group of Jamaican women, but they got called onto cases and I didn't, so I did a *lot* of sitting on my arse.

On the plus side, I did get to be foreman :)

(bizarrely, I got random called up again just 9 months later. However, if it's within two years of your previous jury service, you can refuse to do it, which I did, cos my work wouldn't have been happy)

― Mark C (Mark C), Thursday, 8 May 2003 11:43 (twenty-two years ago)

No counselling that I'm aware of. I was really ashamed coz I was thinking horrible thoughts about the guy in the dock as they read out what he was alleged to have done - so much for innocent until proven guilty!

― smee (smee), Thursday, 8 May 2003 11:44 (twenty-two years ago)

I got paid twice (by the court service and by my employer) but fessed up.

― N. (nickdastoor), Thursday, 8 May 2003 11:48 (twenty-two years ago)

Jury duty

― N. (nickdastoor), Thursday, 8 May 2003 11:51 (twenty-two years ago)

i've never been asked!!

haha the "the crown vs _______ trial has now entered its 2345th week, one juror apparently is proving impossibly contrary and has demanded to cross-examine the chief of police himself, citing non-euclidean geometry and an old episode of buffy"

― mark s (mark s), Thursday, 8 May 2003 11:53 (twenty-two years ago)

Been called up three times, only been seated on a jury itself once, but got out of it. Yay.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Thursday, 8 May 2003 12:07 (twenty-two years ago)

getting out of it in jury-challenge land is surely quite easy, you just declare an intense partisan expertise in the juridical issues at hand (ok this is based on reports of the r0dney king trial rather than any intense partisan expertise on my part)

― mark s (mark s), Thursday, 8 May 2003 12:09 (twenty-two years ago)

"The trick to getting out of jury duty is to tell them you're prejudiced against every race." - H. Simpson.

― fletrejet, Thursday, 8 May 2003 12:12 (twenty-two years ago)

never been called up.

a friend of mine was in on monday, for the second time, but he wasn't actually on the jury first time around.

― RJG (RJG), Thursday, 8 May 2003 12:13 (twenty-two years ago)

Ned, why did you want to get out of it?

― N. (nickdastoor), Thursday, 8 May 2003 12:14 (twenty-two years ago)

That first time I was jobless for the summer and essentially concentrating on a couple of freelance articles to write which would have seen me through to the next school year. Jury duty would have put paid to me being able to write up said articles, or at least research them properly, so I pled financial hardship in an extreme case and they gave me permission to leave -- the case itself was scheduled to run for weeks rather than a couple of days, which I would have dealt with just fine. The next two times I was called up I was working for the library, which covers jury duty absences with full pay, so hey.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Thursday, 8 May 2003 12:20 (twenty-two years ago)

got called up a few years ago, but rang up and told them as i was a student and it was the holidays i wouldn't be around (this wasn't true but i needed to earn some money working). they accepted this without any trouble.

― toby (tsg20), Thursday, 8 May 2003 12:21 (twenty-two years ago)

radical subjectivism surely renders jury service a touch tricky?

― Tim (Tim), Thursday, 8 May 2003 12:22 (twenty-two years ago)

I did jury service but the case collapsed as soon as we (finally) got into court. Which was quite exciting in itself. I got paid, though I can't now remember whether it was by the court or my employer. I do remember that I was the only member of jury to choose to affirm instead of take oath - like sure, they were all Christians... everyone looked at me like I was a troublemaker.

― Archel (Archel), Thursday, 8 May 2003 12:23 (twenty-two years ago)

I wasn't judging their music collection. ;-)

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Thursday, 8 May 2003 12:24 (twenty-two years ago)

no wonder you didn't want to do it

― Tim (Tim), Thursday, 8 May 2003 12:24 (twenty-two years ago)

Hey!

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Thursday, 8 May 2003 12:24 (twenty-two years ago)

I did jury service in, I think, '96, whilst I was doing a job which I hated, so that was great. Also great was the fact that the court is only a stone's throw from my house (and the shops) and tho it was a really straightforward theft case it still somehow lasted a week coz we kept getting sent home (sometimes we were told "the judge has a meeting", sometimes no explanation was given). Ten of the twelve were from Banbury, so they sat in the little ante-room prior to being called into the courtroom blathering on abt trivial Banbury stuff ("Have you seen that big multistorey car-park they're building opposite Tescos?") whilst the two of us who actually *were* from Oxford just looked at each other.

What I found fascinating was how quickly we elected a spokesman...like it was perfectly obvious to all of us who was the right person for the job. *He* was the only one of us to affirm rather than take the oath.

― MarkH (MarkH), Thursday, 8 May 2003 12:51 (twenty-two years ago)

I got called up last year while I was waiting to start working. It was horrible. I expected it to be like in movies where you would be chosen for one trial and asked questions while on the stand. I show up and there are about 80 people there and I realize that they will be picking 11 juries for trials that day. So it was quite possible to be picked for 3 trials or none. They paid crap too. Only 9 cents a mile driven and something obscene like 10 dollars for the day. I was picked for one trial, although I tried really hard not to be, I wore my most offensive t shirt and fell asleep. But was still picked. And then found out that I had start my job and train for 3 weeks during my jury dates. I called and called trying to get out of it, telling them that as much as I loved being paid $10 dollars a day I really had to start a job that would actually allow me to live. They kept making me feel bad and then 2 days before I was to leave my judge called and grudgingly let me out of it. I hate where I live now.

― Carey (Carey), Thursday, 8 May 2003 13:04 (twenty-two years ago)

"Your honor, we find the defendant guilty of having an inexcusable number of Phish albums."

― j.lu (j.lu), Thursday, 8 May 2003 13:07 (twenty-two years ago)

= *any* number of Phish albums, no?

― Mark C (Mark C), Thursday, 8 May 2003 13:23 (twenty-two years ago)

Sounds like the death penalty right there!

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Thursday, 8 May 2003 13:34 (twenty-two years ago)

I spent two weeks on a jury for a sex harrassment and job discrimination trial a few months ago. It was awful. I was glad for the experience, and luckily my employer paid me my full salary while I was gone (so I used the $45 given to me by the feds for each day of duty to buy CDs downtown), but the whole thing was a farce. I gained a lot of respect for trial lawyers (based on the things they did wrong and right) and lost a fair bit of respect for the system as a whole.

― amateurist (amateurist), Thursday, 8 May 2003 13:34 (twenty-two years ago)

one month passes...

i just got called for jury duty! no automatic exemption for lawyers in NJ any more, though. so i may be stuck (though hopefully i'll be eliminated on voir dire cause they don't want a smart-ass lawyer in the jury). or i might postpone.

― Tad (llamasfur), Monday, 9 June 2003 08:42 (twenty-two years ago)

tad the butler did it!!

― mark s (mark s), Monday, 9 June 2003 09:05 (twenty-two years ago)

I never got to decide on the case i was on, as i knew a witness & was dismissed from the jury! :-(

― Pinkpanther (Pinkpanther), Monday, 9 June 2003 10:10 (twenty-two years ago)

I did jury service last year, it was okay, I was sitting around waiting to be called to be on the jury most of the time. Read three books in about 5 days.

― jel -- (jel), Monday, 9 June 2003 21:47 (twenty-two years ago)

I was part of the jury for a drug case, but the prosecutor did something stupid almost as soon as it started, and the case was thrown out (or more likely put off until another jury could be pulled together?). As the jurors filed out, the defendant asked one of the young woman among them for her phone number. I wish I had that kind of chutzpa.

― Rockist Scientist, Saturday, 21 June 2003 15:18 (twenty-two years ago)

oh yeah, the judge dismissed me ... i told her i was going on vacation on july 1st and that i'd planned it months in advance. and she let me go. good thing, too, i was called for a murder trial that the judge estimated would last at least 2 weeks (and with a witness list the length of my arm)!

― Tad (llamasfur), Monday, 30 June 2003 00:27 (twenty-two years ago)

I had jury duty today. One trial I avoided because I said that given instructions on how to base my decision on whether to sentence someone to life imprisonment or the death penalty, I would choose life imprisonment, regardless, out of principle. (It was a homicide trial.) The second trial I might potentially have been a juror for was postponed because the defendant left the court-house. Other than that, it was a lot of waiting around.

― Rockist Scientist, Tuesday, 8 July 2003 19:26 (twenty-two years ago)

four years pass...

I must go on Monday! And I leave for vacation on Thursday! Help!

― Alfred, Lord Sotosyn, Tuesday, 4 December 2007 23:20 (eighteen years ago)

tell them your religion forbids you to judge others

― Shakey Mo Collier, Tuesday, 4 December 2007 23:20 (eighteen years ago)

I would love to serve on a jury, but when I got called a couple of months ago, it was deadline week on the magazine and I got out of it.

― Rock Hardy, Wednesday, 5 December 2007 01:04 (eighteen years ago)

my jury produced a pretty high-quality dinner party

― gabbneb, Wednesday, 5 December 2007 01:13 (eighteen years ago)

In the UK having a ready-booked holiday is a good enough reason for being allowed to defer it.

― Mark C, Wednesday, 5 December 2007 10:56 (eighteen years ago)

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