Jury Duty!

[chicken]

Oh boy, I just got a jury duty summons. ?!?

If I get picked the trial extends past the date I become a Massachusetts resident, what happens then? Would I suddenly become an ineligible juror?

I hope I don't get picked, because I sure don't want to miss that much work.

Does anyone have any jury stories of their own to tell? Do, tell. :-)

Comments

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

Hey, I just got a jury duty summons too, in Massachusetts. The date is in the summer.

It's for the courthouse way out in Ayer. I got summoned there once before, back before I even had a car, but they had a number you could call the night before to see if they needed you, and they didn't.

So that didn't render me temporarily ineligible to get summoned again, and they tapped me a year or two later, this time at the East Cambridge courthouse near Lechmere. This was when the Louise Woodward case was nearing trial and I was scared to death that I would end up embroiled in that circus. But they moved the venue away from there before my time came.

I went there, sat around all day, and didn't get anywhere near a panel. The end. Massachusetts has a "one day/one trial" system, wherein if you either (a) serve on a jury or (b) wait for a whole day and don't get on a jury, you're off the hook for three years. They didn't get around to bothering me again until just now.

[chicken-cem.livejournal.com]

I don't know where Ayer is, or how far it is from where you live. Just tell me -- can they summon you anywhere in Massachusetts? I am glad to hear you didn't get embroiled in a huge case.

The "one day/one trial" system sounds very sane, and probably better than what Rhode Island has. We'll see.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

I live inside Route 128; Ayer is way out to the northwest beyond 495. It's not that far from where I work, though, so it's not as if the commute is unusual for me these days. There's a commuter rail station there (which must be close to the courthouse since it's a pretty small town), so in theory I'd have had public transportation there.

I'm not sure what the policy is on where they can summon you.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

...Of course, one day/one trial doesn't apply to the federal courts, and you can still get summoned by the feds to far more onerous duty. The grand-jury system is particularly bad; I know a guy who got summoned to be part of a federal grand jury, and they basically owned him one day a week for months on end, sitting on indictment after indictment.