If there is one thing that almost all American citizens hate, it is beyond a doubt, jury duty. We hate it because it’s mandatory, and disruptive. It takes you away from your life, your home, your job, your responsibilities. This spring I personally was called to serve twice. If you end up not having to serve the first time they put you right back up on top of the list for an immediate re-call. That’s always fun. I spent months in mental anguish, dreading every second of jury duty I never had to serve in the first place.
The notification that arrives in the mail is a real winner, isn’t it? You MUST appear on such and such a date or you could be held in contempt. Well, I’ll tell you something about contempt. I had a whole bunch of it when I read that. I have always felt that jury duty should be voluntary rather than mandatory, as it is for people over seventy years old. If it were voluntary, the people who have always wanted to serve but never have been called to serve, would finally get their chance. Is that such a bad thing?
The fact that I made it 36 years without ever once receiving one of those letters is beyond the point. I could have gone a life-time without that hassle. The phone call you have to make the night before the actual jury duty is scheduled to begin is the worst part. I dreaded that moment for two months each time, and then when it finally came, I shook like a leaf until it was over. Both times the court date was cancelled, once due to weather, and once just because. I assume the case was settled out of court.
And what exactly does it take to get out of jury duty? A letter to the judge certainly won’t do it. I tried that trick. I got a nasty letter back from her secretary and I could just feel the love rolling off that letter. I went online and searched for ways to get out of jury duty and actually found a web-site dedicated to nothing but that. Some of the tips they gave were mind boggling. Basically, what it amounted to, was that you have to act like either a moron or a psycho in order to get excused from service on a jury. What a system.
I cannot see how forcing unwilling American citizens to serve in judgment over someone else is a good thing. How can that person receive his or her constitutional right to a fair and impartial trial if the entire jury hates being there? I’ll bet a lot of the time people simply vote whichever way everyone else is voting just to hurry the process along so they can go home and take care of their families and go back to their normal daily lives. That’s not a fair trial. I certainly would not want to have a jury like that if I were on trial, especially if I were innocent of any crime. I would want people who really cared, and who wanted to take the time to hear all the evidence, instead of just being there in body but not in mind.
You can call jury service “civic duty” if you want to, but I cannot see any real purpose in making it mandatory. People fake mental illness just to get out of it. That’s laughable. I truly believe that our modern justice system needs an overhaul, and it needs it now. How many more people must get an un-fair trial by unwilling jury before someone stands up and takes notice?
