[timun]

Originally Posted by Jason14h

I always assumed if you didnt want to go to jury duty they effectively didn't want you there and would excuse

I have gotten the mail letter and replied asking to be excused. Literally wrote " I will be working and can't miss work" and both times it was granted.

Couldn't you write " I am a crazy racist who believes to earth if flat and everyone is a criminal" if you want out?

Doesn't the court want people in the Jury who will pay attention and do their best, not someone annoyed to be there.

Almost all of people who get a summons don't want to be there. They don't care about whether you want to do it, they only care whether you can.

Writing some stupid gibberish on the summons form is not going to get you out of it. If anything it's all the more incentive to make you show up for selection. Like I wrote earlier, they have very little patience for dip####s trying to weasel out of jury duty.

The summons is a court order. If you have a legitimate excuse, even if it's for conscientiousness reasons, then you bring that forward and write it down. They don't look kindly on people trying to be funny. Willfully disobeying a court order is grounds for a contempt of court charge.

Is this an actual problem the court faces that people get all the way down to selection and in front of the judge and then try to get out/cause issues?

In my experience, as someone who was averaging a summons per year for a bit, it happens. The first jury selection I was called to almost everyone who went before the judge asked to be excused. Most were granted the excuse and dismissed, generally for the reasons of financial hardship, prearranged plans to be out-of-town, or because they were caring for a dependent and couldn't find someone to take their place for the expected duration of the trial. However, a few were not excused. One I remember pretty clearly, a tatted-up woman who showed up in ratty-looking shorts and a t-shirt; I don't know what her excuse was but the judge was not having it, and counsels had run out of their peremptory challenges so she ended up on the jury.