I'm on jury duty this month, too. The way it works around here is that you get a notice in the mail saying you have jury duty for the month of ______ . You have the opportunity to send in the form and request a deferral to a different month, within the next 10 months. (But then you really have to do it in your deferred month -- no deferring forever.) During your designated month, you have to call in every evening and listen to a recording that tells what jurors and groups are needed the next day. I'm in group 12 so I'm hoping that I'll make it past the first two weeks of December, which is the last two weeks of our semester and it's a pain for 80 people if I miss class. (I teach at the university.) So far, so good: they took group 1 on Dec.1, no one on Dec. 2, groups 2 & 3 on Dec. 3, and no new groups today. The third week of December is finals, and it isn't hard to get someone else to proctor my finals so that wouldn't be a problem.
I get a summons every few years. Normally I only have to report in once or twice during the month, and I don't get placed on a jury. In the last 25 years I've only been seated on one jury, for a DUI case. That jury selection was a little scary: they asked if anyone had ever been arrested for DUI and half the room cleared out. I HOPE many were lying to get out of jury duty -- I hate to think that was a representative cross section of my community's drivers!
They they rejected all the heavy drinkers, no-longer-drinking alcoholics, and non-alcoholic teetotalers. Those of us who would confess to being moderate social drinkers without any history of alcohol-related problems were rare.
So, all of you, keep your fingers crossed that I don't get called in until at least Dec.15 this time. (Sorry, you won't be able to make the finger reach to play whistles with crossed fingers, but it's a small price to pay for my convenience, don't you think?
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