Well, this may get interesting...

[jducoeur]

I finally got around to properly reading the Jury Summons that I received late last week. I had been treating it fairly casually, having been around this a few times before: call the night before and maybe get off the hook, otherwise report to Lowell in the morning, wait around, get some coffee, probably get sent home. The one time I actually got empanelled, the case was quick and fairly interesting.

Now I realize that this one's federal. It's a *three* week window in which I could be called up instead of one, and the trials tend to last a week or two. And instead of Lowell (which is finally fairly convenient to me for the first time), it's downtown at -- well, earlier than I am usually wont to be anywhere.

*Sigh*. I don't really have any reason to ask for a deferral, and it's possible that I could get another interesting case. (And I do think it's an important responsibility, so I'm disinclined to try to weasel out of it.) But this is going to make scheduling our deadlines a real pain, since my schedule is going to be so unpredictable...

Comments

[cvirtue.livejournal.com]

Federal, eh? I've never been called for Federal. Twice for State/local, though.

At least with it being downtown, you can take the train in, and read on the way....

[jducoeur]

I've received the notice for state/local thrice, gone in twice, been empanelled once. Overall, that hasn't been too bad.

As for the train: hmm. I'll have to give that some thought. Getting *to* the train is about 2/3 of the way there, of course. (It's 23 minutes from our house to the T. Any T. We're equidistant to the Red, Orange and Green lines, and they all take 23 minutes according to Google.) Given the hour of the morning, I may simply drive in -- I believe I have to be there before morning rush gets bad. (I need to report in by 8:15, which means I probably need to park by 8am.)

How much notice?

[metageek.livejournal.com]

How much notice do you have?

Re: How much notice?

[jducoeur]

A while -- my three-week window starts in mid-November. But that only helps to a modest degree: it means that we now know that, in two months, my time gets really hard to plan...

[fairdice.livejournal.com]

We lost someone to Grand Jury duty earlier this year: that's three days a week for three months. What a bear.

Sometimes it's remarkable that the system works at all...

[hfcougar.livejournal.com]

Please don't get sequestered during my event.

[jducoeur]

Trust me, I have very little desire to get sequestered, period. If it comes to that, I may have to plead hardship: it would mean that I couldn't contribute *anything* at work, and that could be disastrous. (As it is, I expect I'll need to spend at least some work-time every day...)

[isisofcool.livejournal.com]

I did Federal jury duty about 2 years ago. The cases are at a level where I think "interesting" is one word you could use. Scary is another. They were looking at seating a jury for a 3+ week case for an accused drug dealer that got settled at the 11th hour. The other case involved a law suit against my employer that I had already heard about and had a rather firm opinion about, so I got dismissed.

They have a better cafeteria, and an awesome view of Boston Harbor.

[jducoeur]

Useful information; thanks! Gah: a multi-week case would be a real nuisance for me...

[hungrytiger]

And to follow up on isisofcool's comment, I seem to recall that doing your Federal jury duty comes with a longer than standard exemption from future state jury duty.

[jducoeur]

Could be -- the form I got doesn't mention that, but that's not really surprising. (It does talk about the relationship in the other direction, but it's not helpful: you get exempted if you've done 5+ days on state/local in the past three years...)