Once Called for Jury Duty How Long Before You Get Called Again
T wo years ago a reader contacted Guardian Coin after being summoned for a fourth fourth dimension to serve on a jury. Now he has been called up once again – and wonders if v trips to the jury box is something of a tape.
Robert Smith*, 64, says he has enjoyed his previous stints in court and sees it as his civic duty, which he is proud to undertake. But it has left him scratching his head every bit to why he is called so often.
Plenty of people go through their lives never beingness summoned; others are called repeatedly. Is selection really, every bit the regime says, entirely random, or is something else at work hither?
In 2015 there were 361,300 juror summons issued in England and Wales, merely the number who actually sat on a jury was simply 179,200. With the two nations having a full population of 57.8 1000000, information technology means the chances of serving are relatively slim. The Ministry building of Justice declined to give figures on the likelihood of existence summoned, merely a BBC Scotland analysis found that the probability of being asked to serve is just 40% over a lifetime.
That makes Smith's v summons very rare. The MoJ says that if yous are chosen inside two years of the concluding fourth dimension you served y'all have an automatic right to be excused. Smith'south latest summons is nigh exactly ii years after his last.
Numerous theories abound on the internet as to why some people are called to serve and others not. Some believe they are blacklisted considering they have an Irish gaelic heritage (dating back to IRA terrorism days), or that they were one time a member of CND. Others believe a letter to the courts suggesting you are a "hanger and flogger" volition go you off the hook. Some reckon they have been picked because they have been at the same address or same job for years on stop and are a conservative, reliable type.
The reality is rather more dull. The Jury Cardinal Summoning Bureau (JCSB) randomly chooses names from the balloter register. Information technology is under no requirement to call people who are a representative cantankerous-department of order – which is why, in theory, it is possible to have juries which are entirely male person or female. According to the MoJ, no effort is fabricated to remainder gender, historic period or ethnicity. Information technology is as random as the prize number generator for premium bonds. Some people hold premium bonds all their life and win null, others win again and again.
Smith says those summoned should prize the experience. "I found information technology really interesting. Some days information technology can be immensely frustrating, other days rather slow, and sometimes information technology's very harrowing. I see it every bit a citizenship thing – that is, a duty for those chosen – and should be a source of pride. Sometimes information technology can make y'all incertitude your fellow citizens, but as I've been with 12 men and women good and truthful, and they have been an absolute pleasance to work with."
Smith acknowledges that he has been 23 years at the aforementioned accost, but he adds that his start summons was at an before address in another London civic. It means he has seen the inside of more crown courts than well-nigh career criminals.
Ironically, before Smith became semi-retired he worked in HR, and would regularly write messages to the courts request for an employee to be excused from jury service. "I worked in a large bank, and some staff were under huge pressure. Often it wasn't them simply their managers who would insist that they could not spare the two weeks out of the office."
Back in the 1980s and 1990s such letters worked, just today the courts are less keen to excuse people. "They gradually got much tougher nearly it because anybody was doing it. You can understand why – I remember the problem was that juries started to be largely made up of retired people and the unemployed."
Actually, the figures for excusals remain relatively high: of the 361,300 summons in 2015, 27% were excused – up one pct point on the twelvemonth earlier.
Some people are automatically excluded from a summons. Y'all're non wanted if y'all're over 70 or under xviii. Neither can you serve if you have been in prison in the past 10 years. But other than that, you'll need a "good reason" why yous are unavailable for the side by side 12 months, otherwise you will simply be deferred and chosen again at a later date.
Grounds for excusal include:
You lot can't speak or empathize English
You have responsibilities equally a carer
Your excusal would cause "unusual hardship" for your business
You are a member of the military and your absence would be prejudicial to the efficiency of the service
Most other excuses are treated every bit reasons to defer, not to avoid, jury service. Information technology used to be the case that "officials" such as police officers, MPs and judges could gain automatic excusal, but those days are gone – police officers who know a detail court well are simply sent to be jurors at other courts outside their working area, while MPs are allowed to avoid jury service in their constituency but will be expected to attend elsewhere. Yous can fifty-fifty find yourself on a jury sitting next to a judge. They are only excused if they are known to parties involved in the trial. Other than that, they have to plow up, likewise.
Much more commonly, you tin delay jury service but merely in one case, and you lot accept to say when you lot volition be bachelor over the adjacent 12 months.
The chief grounds for deferral are:
You have a holiday booked
You are having an operation
You are a instructor and it is test time
You lot are a taking a temporary task (eg a university educatee during summer) that you'd lose if forced to attend court
The nigh common complaints about jury service come from immature mothers and the self-employed. Mumsnet forums are alive with complaints from mothers with pre-school children. "The accompanying bumf says they pay £32.47 per mean solar day for any childcare costs incurred … round hither that would but virtually pay for 3 hours' worth of babysitting," says one, while another says, "I just completed eight days of jury service (in Scotland) and, despite having three pre-schoolers, I was not excused."
The £32.47 is the fee paid past the courts as expenses to jurors who serve 4 hours or under, for x days or fewer. The figure rises to £64.95 for more than four hours a day, so goes up the longer the example lasts. The courts will also pay £5.71 a day for food and potable.
Many self-employed argue that £64.95 is inappreciably enough to cover their losses and, what's more, the person has to provide show of loss of earnings before the sum is paid out. Last twelvemonth, research by Churchill Habitation Insurance plant that one in twenty employers refused to pay their staff if they undertook jury service, while a third stopped after five days. In that location is no legal obligation for firms to pay employees while on jury service.
Boredom is perhaps a bigger issue for many who are chosen up. Much of the time a juror spends in crown court is in a room waiting to exist chosen. The MoJ is trying to tackle this, saying its "juror utilisation rate" has rise past 12% since 2006 to around 71%. Simply that still means a lot of people spending a lot of fourth dimension twiddling their thumbs.
Typically, jurors are required to be bachelor for 10 days, but sometimes longer. The MoJ says: "The court will always call more people than may be needed to ensure they have enough people when the juries are existence picked. Most jurors are called for approximately ten working days. During this fourth dimension you could sit on a number of juries covering a wide range of trials; notwithstanding this cannot be guaranteed."
If yous are called for a trial, 15 of y'all will exist led into the court room, with 12 somewhen selected. But don't await an episode of The Good Wife, with jurors challenged past fancy lawyers. In Britain, the court clerk will select 12 out of the 15 potential jurors at random to sit on the jury. Just and so will you find out if you are on a fascinating trial or something rather more wearisome. And don't ever recall about skipping service – a juror in Leeds who failed to turn upwards at court, maxim "I can't be bothered, information technology's really boring", was arrested for contempt of court, while another was fined £100 for filing her nails and reading a magazine while hearing a case. The judge called her behaviour "disgraceful".
* Robert Smith is not his existent proper name
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Source: https://www.theguardian.com/money/2016/aug/20/jury-service-repeated-summons
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