Jury Duty

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Not registering to vote, doesn't get you out of jury duty. I've never registered to vote in my life, but I've gotten lots of jury summonses.

It depends on where you live. Some jurisdictions use voter lists, others drivers license info, or they can even do a directory of those 18 and older in every household.

I did jury duty some 7 years ago now for a criminal case. I found it interesting yet I struggled with taking all the information in. I had to sit long hours as court officials do their thing. When it came to the deliberation and verdict, I really couldn't have any real idea to cast judgment and followed the others into their verdicts. It was a week long, didn't want to be there but had no choice, selection is entirely at random.

Actually, if they want to push it they'll send a sheriff's deputy to your house to haul your ass off to jail. I wouldn't recommend just ignoring a jury summons for anyone. If you get a summons take a few minutes to get out of it properly.

I've been called to serve on a jury twice. On both occasions I applied successfully to be exempted. In Australia if you have organised travel or have a legitimate medical certificate then you can avoid being called up for jury duty.

I was told that I had jury duty once, and that I was supposed to call a certain number at a certain time. A voice recording told me that there were no trials in the next few days and that I should call again. That kept happening every time I called until my term of service expired.

If you are very lucky, that is exactly what will happen--and then you won't get called again for at least another two years.

i have been called for it but was perminatly exemt due to my Autism, as i am the last person they want on a jury! number one I struggle to sit still and pay attention number 2 i panix if I have to choose between shirts or 2 foods. making a final decision that will altimatly affect everything for a large number of people, a the person on trial and b any any victums, is just not something I can do not with out a number of panic attacks and then being serously affected with doubt and mild trama from going through that :/

I predict that I will play a lot of Bejeweled Blitz while waiting for jury duty.

I've only been summoned after I register to vote, and summoned repeatedly until my registration lapses. I never get summoned when I do not have valid voter registration.

Thats what they would like you to think. The reality is that if they put every person who ignores a jury summons in jail, the jails would be instantly overloaded. The most they will do is send you another letter.

This article explains how it works.

:arrow: How to Avoid Jury Duty

From your state:

How was I chosen for jury duty?

Your name was selected at random from a list of names generated from voter registration, driver’s license, and "identicard" records. Every year the Administrative Office for the Courts in Olympia creates a new list of names for every court in King County. It is possible, although very unlikely, that you will be summoned by one or more courts in the same year or over the course of several years.

Not if you just get a questionnaire and not an actual summons. I've known people that ignore the questionnaire and the ones that actually fill it out and send it back are the ones that actually get summoned. Nothing ever happens to them.

I'd just ignore them because they can't prove I ever got it. I don't know if I could get out of it because I don't have a diagnosis.

I barely even leave my house. I don't know if I'd manage to even get there every day if I had to do it, especially if it took a long time and in the unlikely event that I had to be sequestered to me that would be just as bad as jail. Either way I'm forced away from my home and locked up.

I'm registered to vote but my mother never did and she got called a couple of times. She always got out of it though either by an excuse or by sitting there a day or two and them deciding that they didn't need her.

From the article (this is actually what people I know do):

"If you have just received the Jury Duty letter, DO NOT fill it out and DO NOT return it. The letter will, no doubt, inform you that not returning the form is a criminal offence, subject to various penalties. You can safely forget about those penalties. Each batch of mailed out Jury Duty forms gets about an 80% return rate. The 20% not answering include those who have moved, who have not picked up their mail or who do not, for whatever reason, want to get involved.

Almost always the 20% who do not answer are completely ignored and their names are removed from the process. Very rarely, a second request is sent out. The threatened penalty of criminal charges are so rare as to be virtually unheard of. In the extremely rare event of a "crack down" on people ignoring the call for Jury duty, the people in the Judicial process will have to prove that you received their notice. Normally this is done by sending a registered letter, something that has to be signed for."

I don't have a driver's license and never have. Whenever my name's been drawn it's due to voter registration.

Also, I've lived ~3/4 of my life in Oregon, not Washington - which also makes use of driver's license and voter registration records. But I still never had a driver's license, so.

In my case the correlation does appear to be causation.