<p>My D is a Massachusetts college student who has been called twice - once in her freshman year for regular jury duty and again in her sophomore year for grand jury duty, which can last months. She does not have a car, and the grand jury location was a two-hour drive away. At first they told her she had to come there to ask a judge in person if she wanted to be dismissed, but somehow she was able to avoid doing that. She has never registered for anything in MA; this is just based on dorm residency.</p>
<p>I think it’s problematic to require college students to serve. There really isn’t any make-up possible for labs and other hands-on activities like that.</p>
<p>I would think that towns or cities running a census would be rare as it would be considered a waste of scarce resources, especially when the Federal Government does one every ten years. I guess living in an off-campus apartment gets around this issue assuming that you aren’t captured by a local census in an off-campus apartment.</p>
<p>Is the crime rate in MA so high that they need to find jurors any which way they can?</p>
<p>I’ve heard of the police going on to the street and stopping people walking on the street to serve on jury duty for the day.</p>
<p>In new york they simply had me return a form with the explanation that my son was in school out of state in a addition to a copy of his current tuition bill. That satisfied the court.</p>
<p>Thanks for all the comments and advice. I’m glad to see that my daughter isn’t the only MA student called for jury duty. The irony is that we had a long discussion about where to register to vote, and one of the arguments against registering in MA was that it would make her eligible for jury duty there (who knew that was not a factor?). Of course, the other argument against registering in MA was that such a Blue State didn’t need any more liberal voters, and that didn’t work out so well either, did it?</p>
<p>Our daughter did get the date deferred as far as possible, from this week to the middle of May, but that is as far as the court was willing to go. Apparently, other students have written requests to waive their service, but none of those requests have been successful. Finally, the darned courthouse is quite remote and a long walk from the nearest bus line, so it is not clear how she can even get there, short of getting someone to drive her or take a taxi (or bike 9-10 miles over the Holyoke Range).</p>
<p>I’m going to suggest that she adopt a Goth-Punk look and demeanor as insurance against being selected. Maybe some rub-on tattoos?</p>
<p>I’m not buying into the ‘Public Service’ argument either. I’ve sat on two juries and they were both travesties. Granted, both times we convicted guys who I am sure were truly guilty, but the jury discussions rarely centered around the actual facts of the cases. Both times I was elected the jury Foreman (further proof that my peers had poor judgement), but was generally unable to get my fellow jurors to focus on the presented facts. Lawyers know this and appeal to jurors’ biases and feelings, as opposed to their understanding of the applicable laws. The whole system just feels like a charming anachronism to me. In any event, my daughter will have the rest of her life to perform this public service, as opposed to taking day(s) out of her college coursework.</p>
<p>My guess, and its only a guess, is that that MA residents ignore jury summons with impunity, so they have to go after college students. (Kinda ironic, IMO, since many/most of them are not registered to vote in MA, but are required to ‘taxed’ for their personal services – kinda like taxation without representation?)</p>
<p>That only works if you have a mailbox. If you don’t have a mailbox, the city, county or state can’t send you a jury notification. Well, they can but it will just bounce from the post office.</p>
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<p>Similar to local police targeting college students for revenue because drug dealers shoot back.</p>
<p>We live in CT, so I can’t generalize to MA, but H has never responded at all to any of the jury summons he has received (I’m not condoning, just reporting), and no consequence has ever followed. I doubt any state has the resources to chase down non-compliers. If OP’s D can’t get to the courthouse by public transportation or has an important class that day, she should just skip it. It’s ridiculous to summon college students who have no lasting relationship to the community or involvement in local civic events, and even more ridiculous to expect them to miss classes and get to remote locations. It’s a dopey law; my conscience wouldn’t bother me a bit.</p>
<p>Our state’s system allows those summoned to call in the night before and learn if they are actually needed the next day–it depends on the docket, but usually more than half are excused at that point. I was once placed on a jury despite the fact that my voir dire revealed a number of reasons why I shouldn’t be on it–I was an attorney myself, knew one of the attorneys personally, and expressed skepticism about the defendant’s profession. They must have been awfully desperate for jurors. They settled the night before trial, so I never had to serve in the end, but did waste an entire day on the preliminaries.</p>
<p>A friend’s husband is a County Sheriff and he said one of the dirty little secrets in California is that no judge can/will issue a subpoena for ignoring a jury duty summons unless the County Clerk can prove that the summons was in fact served to the named individual. And, since mail is lost daily, the USPS is not an approved ‘server.’ </p>
<p>Of course, this may only be a California deal.</p>
<p>I have known several folks who ignore their juy summonses & thus far, have never heard of any of them being hauled into court as a consequence. I agree that it’s likely a lack of resources, but really something I try to discourage because if I were involved in a case, I really WOULD want decent reasonable people showing up and willing to serve.</p>
<p>Would you really want ****ed off students worrying about their chem lab, finals or term projects to judge you? We have 9.5% unemployment in this country or around 14.8 million people looking for work. How about states hiring folks to be jurors for a year at a time? They might be even to get people that don’t want to do jury duty to kick in a few bucks.</p>
<p>Many who are called to serve are stressed, angry, etc., about being called to serve. If you only wanted those who came willingly, there would be even more trouble getting jurors than they have at the moment. They do pay some nominal amount for folks to be on the grand jury & the amount we pay jurors for regular cases is FAR below the amounts they lose in whatever job they hold–barely pays for parking & perhaps a few hours at minimum wage. I think I was paid about $30/day when I served earlier this decade. They would need to bump it up to at least minimum wage for Fair Labor Standards & all of those folks.</p>
<p>Having just served on a jury, I can attest to the problem of the ****ed off juror. A young man on this jury was very annoyed about being there and once he made up his mind about the case, he became rude and condescending to anyone who wouldn’t go with the majority. He was positively mean to a retired man who didn’t agree with him. It made the whole thing even worse than it already was.</p>
<p>I recall some movie where the jurors were taking a long time and there was an important hockey game coming up so that some of the jurors just went with the majority so they could attend the game.</p>
<p>We have professional, paid military services; not conscription. What’s wrong with doing the same thing for jurors?</p>
<p>If you’re serious in asking: (1) No one remotely has the budget to pay for a corps of professional jurors. (2) That almost certainly is not what the Constitution (or any state constitution) means by a right to trial by jury. If they are going to be jaded pros, why bother with a jury anyway? Why not leave everything to the (trained, professional) judge?</p>
<p>We’re spending $65 billion/year for emergency unemployment insurance. I’m just proposing using a chunk of that money to pay for professional jurors.</p>
<p>We’re supposed to get a jury of our peers. Do we really get that with the current system?</p>
I live in MA. We are sent a census form every single year from our Town Clerk. If you don’t fill it out you will be removed from the voter registration roles. Never had that in NJ. </p>
<p>Interestingly MA does not issue Voter Registration cards, we are not required to show any ID whatsoever when voting, and don’t have to sign our names that we’re voting. Just give the person at the poll your name and address and they check you off. Seems ripe for voting fraud if you ask me, but that’s how they do it here.</p>
<p>As for the idea that the crime rate in Mass is high so we need more jurors? MA has one of the lower crime rates in the country. Statistically speaking you are safer leaving your door unlocked in Boston than in Columbia SC. </p>
<p>I suspect MA calls college students because we have so many of them. With one day, one trial, they go through a lot of jurors who show up for one day and end up not serving. </p>
<p>Ironically, I have NEVER been called for jury duty - not federal, county, or state. And I’ve lived in MA for 24 years.</p>
<p>This was all over the news in the Boston area a month ago:</p>
<p>Massachusetts retained its status as the most violent state in the Northeast, according to a report released Tuesday morning by public health advocates and based on statistics compiled by the FBI.</p>
<p>In its biennial report that studies health care trends in the state, the Massachusetts Health Council said approximately 30,000 violent crimes were committed in Massachusetts in 2009 or 456 violent crimes per 100,000 people, making it the highest per capita crime rate in the Northeast.</p>
<p>The report looked at the six New England states, New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania. The violent crimes include murder, manslaughter, rape, armed robbery, and aggravated assault.</p>
<p>Not sure if this was said - I didn’t read through all 4 pages of replies.</p>
<p>It’s voter fraud to be registered in two places…just have her send a copy of her hometown voter registration card to the local MA office which summoned her and they will take her off their roles. She is not a legal resident of the state of MA so she cannot be called for jury duty there.</p>
<p>Our D had reverse–got the summon to jury duty at home-- which is where she maintains her driver’s license…but since PA (where she’s in school) needed more college age voters in 2008 (presumably to vote for Obama), several colleges had a mass registration drive and she is now registered to vote in PA. We sent that card to our hometown local jury summons and that ended the problem (for now at least).</p>
<p>Pesky court clerks don’t understand that a student cannot miss two weeks or even a day of classes. Civic duty sure-- but some people really cannot attend without undue hardship.</p>
<p>In the 4 pages, it was determined that MA is special and can call in college students for jury duty, even if their permanent residences are out of state.</p>