Jury Duty
Written by William Mulgrew on February 3rd, 2007So the City of Brotherly Love decided to summon me for jury duty, lest I get fined for contempt of court.
But how can I get out of it?
Well, if I don’t know how to speak English, I’m exempted (¿Puede Ud. leer, escribir y entender ingles?)
If I’m not a resident of Philadelphia I’m exempted. I’m registered to vote in Philly, but under Pa. law, your voter registration is not the sole determinant of your legal domicile. For insurance and tax purposes, I’m a resident of Delaware County.
Perhaps the fact that I’m a full-time college student or my present occupation as a reporter could get me off the hook?
Here’s a novel idea I could put in the remarks section:
“I’m an advocate of jury nullification.”
3
PM
You could always just do it….
4
PM
Wear a suit and bring a high end newspaper WSJ or New York Times lawyers hate to have people on a jury that might actually know something about the law.
4
PM
Just tell them that your profession is an engineer. Defense attorneys hate having engineers on juries, they think too analytically.
5
AM
Your school responsibilities should preclude your. It worked for me.
5
PM
I’ve served on two juries, and been on call six times. It varies from county to county, but if it works the same way there, you’ll have to call a phone number every day for 30 days to see if you’ve been called. Usually, you haven’t been. If you’ve been called, you report at the time and place given on the phone call, you wait a while, they ask you some questions, and 9 times out of 10, reject you.