eJuror Will Lead To New List of Jury Duty Excuses 191
coondoggie writes "Now you can say your jury duty request got lost in the cloud, or that the network was down, or the Internet ate it. That's because the US District Court system is close to completing a rollout of its national eJuror system that lets prospective jurors have the option of responding to their jury questionnaire or summons online. About 80 of the 94 US district courts have had the eJuror software installed and more than half of those courts are already live on the system."
Fully Informed Jury members (Score:5, Informative)
If you think you're a fair person, being on a jury is not a bad thing.
Even better, being a fully informed member of a jury
http://fija.org/ [fija.org] --(Fully Informed Jury Association)
Re:Fully Informed Jury members (Score:5, Informative)
No they aren't, at least in my state. They have the option to pay you but it is not a requirement. One of the ways you can escape jury duty in NYS is if you can demonstrate that it would be a 'financial hardship' to serve.
My employer pays my full wage, minus the amount I receive from the court for serving. Seems fair enough to me. I'd do the same if I was an employer and had the financial resources. People should be encouraged to serve on juries -- it's your civic duty and provides an invaluable check against Governmental power.
Re:For the Love of God, serve on a jury (Score:3, Informative)
If any of us had really wanted to get out of being on the jury, there was a certain answer to one of the jury screening questions which would have most likely caused us to not be selected. There was the question of whether or not we thought that bicycles should be allowed to share the road with cars. However, we all truthfully said that we thought that bicycles should be allowed to share the road with cars.
Just ahead of that, they had asked if any of us had never ridden a bicycle. They also asked if any of us had never driven a car. Presumably, they wanted jurors who both knew how to ride a bicycle and drive a car.
It was a 6 person jury, with one alternate juror. About half of us had either a 2-year or 4-year college degree. All of the jurors seemed intelligent enough and took their duties seriously. Despite a few minor contradictions in the testimony, the basic facts seemed clear enough to us to find the driver of the car guilty of reckless endangerment and also guilty of a similar charge.
The next day, at work, one of my co-workers and her husband criticized the fact that we had found the driver of the car guilty. They made it clear that they thought that bicyclists on the road were an annoying hazard, and that they thought that the bicyclist should have been the one that was found guilty. The driver of the car would been revving his engine while tailgating the bicyclist from about 6 inches behind, while refusing to go around the bicyclist. The driver of the car felt that the bicyclist should have pulled off of the narrow lane instead of trying to wave at him to him to pass.
Re:Jury selection (Score:5, Informative)
You don't pay those taxes "in exchange for citizenship", you pay them for living in the country and using the infrastructure. This should be obvious, since non-citizen greencard holders pay the same taxes.
Voting and jury duty are pretty much the only civic duties directly associated with citizenship.