Summoned for Jury duty!

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I was. Maybe you were. Share your experiences(good and bad), and how you convinced them to let you off, or.... how you convinced them to let you serve.

Whoa.... and here I was getting excited... when I saw the title of this thread I thought you meant that you had been summoned for jury duty in a case that involves autism, because you, as an autistic, are an expert on it.

I was summoned, I served all of 3 hrs, sat in a waitingroom with about 25 other ppl. I met a girl I knew from high school and we caught up a bit, that was nice, after 3 hrs we were all asked to sit in the court room where the judge announced that a plea deal had been agreed upon and they would not need anyone in the room, im free and clear for 7 years!!

Wow. its only 2 years here.

I got summoned once and I sat in a big room with other people just sitting around reading or eating snacks from the snack machine. After a couple of hours they told me to go home, they didn't select me. Oh well.

I hope I never get summoned-I am way to indecisive about anything, and am pretty easily swayed.

Either that or I would be worried I would space out halfway through whatever they were talking about and not know what happened.

I've never heard of being like clear from being summoned again for X number of years. How do you find that out what your state's rules are?

I was tricked into registering to vote at some Fair or Festival thingie in town.

About two months later the jury duty summoning started. I was summoned 4 times in less than a year. The first time I was summoned I sat there three hours mostly waiting for my turn to answer questions. It was a DUI case and they had sent paper questionaires that asked "do you know someone that died because of a DUI?" so I answered yes because I lost several high school friends to drunk drivers. Well when I got to the courthouse for questioning they had my questionaire so they asked would my friends' deaths affect my opinion on a DUI case and I told them I wasn't sure. What made them kick me off the jury was the fact I don't drink. They kicked me and one other woman off for NOT drinking. The lawyers got mad because I told them no my choice not to drink wasn't influenced by religion. I got summoned 2-3 more times after that in the same year, but each of those trials got canceled or rescheduled.

I have since ended up with more ways to possibly get off the jury if summoned again. I have a friend who has police officer in family, my long time friend landed a job at police dept recently, I made friends with a district attorney and I got diagnosed with Aspergers. Surely they don't want an autistic on the jury would they?

They also asked if people had relatives in law enforcement. I was so scared of my surroundings there and being in a large group of strangers that I entirely forgot I had two great grandfathers in law enforcement lol So that might have got me off, not sure how closely related the family member needed to be to get you kicked off though. One bad thing I was so nervous, shy and bumbling and I also walked the wrong direction and nearly smacked into someone so the judge, both lawyers and several other jury members laughed at me. I wanted to crawl under something, but about that time they dismissed me so I got the hell outta there, went to Dennys for brunch and spent the afternoon trout fishing while my employer paid for me to be gone the entire day.

I was summoned. So I left the country to evade jury duty.

Just kidding. I was on my way out anyhow. So I wrote to them and let them know how long I'd be gone. They wrote back and told me (in the space of several paragraphs) that my excuse was cool but they'd be back to get me, because it was my civic duty. Apparently they lied!

Oh I forgot I got summoned before in my early 20's when I lived in another state. And I wasn't even registered to vote. I got out of it by writing a note to the judge because my employer had less than 10 employees and it would have been a hardship to my employer to lose me. Actually I was 1 of 2 employees at that store so the judge legally had to dismiss me I think.

I was summoned a few years ago.Didn't get picked for the jury but still had to report every day
for a week and sit through all the various trials.It was quite interesting and there were a few
others who had to do the same.Here in the UK the judges all wear those funny wigs and everyone
has to respect the court.One guy got a telling off for not standing up when the judge walked in
and said 'All Rise'.
I was nearly summoned again recently but it got cancelled the day before I was due to report.

I'd say go for it. I haven't had that experience but I did work as a courtroom sketch artist in a murder trial and seen some of the recruitment methods for jurors. One thing about it is you have to have an excellent attention span for observing the details of the trial to have a say on the final verdict without any bias. Would you be able to sit in the front of the courtroom for long hours every day for however long the trial may run? It could go on for days, sometimes many weeks.

As long as you don't personally know who is being tried in court and as long as you don't have any issues about the defendent's character or background in any way, you might have a chance to get in. You could be in for an experience in seeing firsthand how the judicial system in your jurisdiction works.

You probably already know this, but there are four ways basically to get out of jury duty!

1. YOUR HARDSHIP!
2. THEIR JURISDICTION!
3. YOUR DISABILITY.
4. THEIR dislike/inability.

1. If this will do you any emotional/financial harm, you may be able to get out of it. This worked with me on EVERY case, except the last one from california where they said it would NOT be accepted anymore! If #2 didn't apply, I would have fought this. They really had no right.

2. If they don't have jurisdiction, they are FORBIDDEN to even ask! California sent that last letter after I moved to another state, so I basically told them FORGET IT! I ALSO told them it would cost THOUSANDS to comply, and I would lose my job, so I added #1 BACK to the mix. They accepted it!

3. If you have a disability that affects your ability to be there, their ability to care for you, your ability to behave, understand, or decide, they can't have you come. Extreme cases of AS or autism may be applicable. You can then get out of it.

4. If all else fails, use that aspie stubborness and be opinionated. If the judge, or one of the attorneys has a couple nuerons, you may not last a day there! They will let you out!

I told them I was prejudice. They let me go. If I was diagnosed with Aspergers at that time I would of given them that excuse, but mine worked equally as fast.

I got summoned for jury duty a few years ago. I didn't get selected, so it was a very boring experience. I sat in a big waiting room all day, where I read the books I brought with me, ate non-stop from the vending machines, and made a little bit of small talk (yes, you read that correctly) with the people sitting near me. In the end, they gave me a check, which reimbursed the food and transportation that day, and let me go.

WHOA, they paid you THAT much!?!?!?

In california, I think the pay is $5/day. $5 a ******DAY*******!

i'd initially tried to get out of jury duty, though i didn't go all-out and get a doctor's note. i just showed up on 1 1/2 hours of sleep, randomly crashing in chairs in the waiting room; i was also wearing a ridiculous amount of black eyeshadow, dark lip tint, a cannibal corpse shirt, and a pentagram. i still made the cut...lol. all i had to do was define the 'innocent until proven guilty' gig.
by the third (final) day, the jury room was so full of crude humour, i ended up enjoying it. i got 114$ for it, which is pretty sweet.