I opened the mailbox this afternoon to find a letter which says “United States District Court.” That’s right, I’ve been summoned for jury duty.
The District Court has been after me for a while, actually. The last summons I received had me reporting for duty the day Travis was born! I was excused that time, for obvious reasons, but I told them I’d welcome service at another time. They do a fine job of keeping track of folks, because one of the very first pieces of mail I received at our new address in April was a jury duty questionnaire.
The only other time I’ve been summoned was in 1996. That was for a local case and it happened the day my company got its new phone system. Nothing was working right and as the IT manager responsible for cleaning up the mess, I got excused. So I suppose I’m due. In fact, maybe long overdue.
My summons says I’m in for a three-week term starting September 8th. Apparently it won’t actually last that long, as most trials are done in 3 to 5 days. My guess is it will probably be some boring case dealing with corporate law, but who knows.
Of course, the odds that I will be able to blog during my service are slim to none, which will be a challenge for me but it beats being in contempt of court (heh). I hope to write about the experience afterward, however. Since I enjoy learning about the law this should be at least a little fun.
Is it a regular jury or a grand jury? I thought the grand juries were the ones that lasted longer and regular ones were more like a day or a week. (Of course, I’ve never served on a federal jury, only local ones).
The last time I got called up for jury duty was in 2000 while I was teaching at UNC. My students really liked the fact that I was out an entire week! I almost got put on a rape & incest trial but thankfully got off that only to get on a he said/she said motor vehicle accident trial that could have been taken care of in 1 day if the dang lawyers hadn’t drawn everything out!