LOL. I was in the pool here in Minneapolis last month. Nice irony: the people whining the most about having to do jury duty were in the TV room, watching….Judge Judy.

Score!  I fucking love New York.  The courthouse has wifi for potential jurors.

I believe the courthouse in Jamaica, Queens has wifi in the waiting room.

Are you going to go dressed as princess leia with a copy of playgirl clutched in your arms?

(do it! do it! do it!)

The courthouse has wifi for potential jurors.

That’s good news.  I recall 20 years ago when a friend was called for jury duty in Staten Island and she wasn’t even allowed to bring in a book to read.  And she had to report every day for two weeks.

Last time I was called in San Mateo County (CA) Redwood City had wifi, but South San Francisco and San Mateo did not.  RWC is the county seat. so most jurors go there.  I managed to convince the jury manager to reassign me from South San Francisco to Redwood City, but ended up not needing to report, anyway.

Of course, I doubt if I’d ever actually be enpaneled.  The one time I was in voir dir, I was asked, “Do you trust the police?” and I responded, “Of course not.  I remember the Mollen Commission reported that most police officers will lie on the witness stand if they think it is necessary to secure a conviction—it is called ‘testilying’ among the police.”

I once sat in the jury duty waiting room next to a young woman yammering on her cell phone that this was “the worst experience of (her) life,”  when we’d been sitting there less than 2 hours (they let us go before the morning was done).  So here’s hoping you survive the horror. 

I bet it would be really fun to take a backpack and sneak a cat in…

It’s convenient to get out of jury duty, but if those of us with lives and ideas and an understanding of how things in society really work don’t serve, who is sitting in judgment in our stead?

I’m glad Amanda is serving, even if it means fewer* awesome blog posts, because it also means there’s a slightly greater chance of someone getting justice.

* almost used “less”, this is one of those cases where the grammar matters

I got called for jury duty years ago in Manhattan criminal court.  During voir dire, the judge asked if I had a partner, and I said that I did.  He asked what she did, and I said she worked for Human Rights Watch.  The judge asked if she had anything to do with the Human Rights Watch report on the New York State prison system.  I told him that my partner’s boss wrote it.

Needless to say, I was not on the jury.  LOL.

It’s convenient to get out of jury duty, but if those of us with lives and ideas and an understanding of how things in society really work don’t serve, who is sitting in judgment in our stead?

Seconded.

James, it’s clear in here that they don’t want jurors to be restless.  Which is smart.  But I can imagine how in the past there was a sadistic tendency towards denying any relief from boredom.  That was also the era when they were building windowless classrooms.  There was this weird hope that if you oppress people enough they’ll pay more attention and behave.  Now we know that people actually do better if they are receiving normal amounts of light and stimulation.

Look at Amanda, that unAmerican, feminazi, godless liebral being all patriotic!  You go!

Dave, the chance that I’ll actually be sitting in a jury box strikes me as super low.

Well, I can say that the last time I got called up for Jury Duty, I was glad to go and “do my part” as it were. Then, I’m told that I am going to sit on a capital case. Immediately, I understand that my ability to be an impartial juror is gone.

Fortunately, while they ignored my indication that I would not be able to sit on a capital case, my husband was having surgery the week that the case was scheduled. So I was able to get out of it.

I’d be fine with sitting on a jury now that I live in a state that doesn’t have the death penalty (so long as my husbands organs don’t get all asplodey again).

Most of the women who were on the panel were really working the hardship angle because of childcare issues, and I know a lot of jobs won’t give you the jury stipend to make up your salary. We should probably start by making jury duty something that a person can do under normal circumstances if we want to see attendance rise.

LOL—the high school in my town is windowless. It’s also “wall-less” (they use temporary/folding walls). The idea was that learning would happen through osmosis, that if a kid was sitting taking a math test, and meanwhile they could hear a lecture on biology, they would totes learn biology while they were doing math.

The graduation rate at this high school isn’t that great.

Geez we wouldn’t want informed people like Richard Goblin or James on juries, they might actually do something crazy like actually evaluate a case based on its merits instead of being easily manipulated sheeps that will eat up all the bullshit the prosecution or defense wants to serve them.

I’m on call for jury duty for the next two months, and luckily I get my pay at work plus a stipend. I was told by a friend that if I really wanted to be on jury duty (which I do) I should probably lie during jury selection. And since I’m a reader of this blog, it’s obvious why.

Just remember: if the court case is against Bill Donohue, do your best to pretend like you don’t know who he is.

LOL—the high school in my town is windowless. It’s also “wall-less” (they use temporary/folding walls). The idea was that learning would happen through osmosis, that if a kid was sitting taking a math test, and meanwhile they could hear a lecture on biology, they would totes learn biology while they were doing math.

I’ve noticed that many poor school districts have these “experimental” features in their school buildings that residents in wealthier districts would not tolerate for a single second. I’ve seen the no-walls-or-doors in classrooms before. My guess it comes from education consultants who get run out of town from functional school districts and prey on low-quality schools offering cheap “solutions” like this which appeal to politicians because they are seen as really great alternatives to actually spending money and hiring competent staff.

I’ve served on a jury, but it was a pretty open-and-shut case.  The prosecutor gave me some crap about the Con Law classes I’d taken as an undergrad, but honestly, the case was so Mickey Mouse that it just wasn’t relevant.  Some dude broke into a Jiffy Lube across the street from the police station during a shift change.  He cut his hand on the door, bleeding into and out of the place, and stole a bunch of change from the register, since the register was empty of anything but change.

He was caught a few minutes later, bleeding, in his car, with a lot of change in his pocket, and a hammer that had a few glass fragments that matched the door under his seat.  As jurors we’d kind of hoped that they’d bother to test the blood for DNA, but srsly.

Doesn’t each lawyer get only a certain number of people they can toss?  Even if you get tossed, then, you’re taking up one of those slots they can’t use to throw out some other thinking person.  So maybe it’s still a win.

@Dave: that’s usually only for No Reason.  Lawyers can toss any number of people for a reason that they can justify to the judge.

I stand corrected.  If you don’t mind, civics lesson: what counts as “justification”?

IIRC, if someone has previous knowledge of a case—like a case that’s been getting a lot of media attention, I think that most jurors will be thrown out because they’ve already formed an opinion on the guilt or innocence of the defendant as a result of media coverage.

Dave, the chance that I’ll actually be sitting in a jury box strikes me as super low.

I’d say there’s a good chance of one of the lawyers doing a spit-take when they hear your name…

Amanda, I’ve heard that Brooklynites get called for jury duty only once eight years.  If you stay in the borough you might be done until 2019.  I fourth James, Dave Fried, Richard Goblin and BlackBloc: bummer to lose you.

Are you going to go dressed as princess leia with a copy of playgirl clutched in your arms?

Warning that if I were picking the jury, that would probably get you on the panel, not off. Of course, I do civil cases, not criminal (Amanda might also be put on a panel for a civil case, not a criminal one, depending on what’s up that day).

Peremptory challenges are those where you can just say “We would like to thank and excuse juror #6” without having to give a reason. Each side gets a limited number of those. Cause challenges are those where the juror has expressed a bias, or where you think the juror is biased, and those are limited, plus the judge has to be persuaded the juror is biased; some judges have an irritating habit of saying “I understand that you have said you’re horribly biased against [side], Mr. Behemoth, but you can be fair and impartial, can’t you?” and treating a ‘yes’ answer as final.

And sometimes a person gets on a jury not because they are a great pick for one side or the other, but because everybody else was so much worse.

Libertarian, that would be outside the framework of a voir dire, unless she was called for a case where there was enough time between the selection and the challenge process in order to do the kind of research that you’re talking about.

She hasn’t treated the Church with respect, along with posting about their documented transgressions against children and families from an atheist POV, that’s not demonstrating a bias per se.

Dargh, edit fail. Cause challenges are UNlimited, not limited.

Several years ago I was in a state-wide jury pool for a possibly high profile federal capital case.  (Ironically, my state had recently abolished capital punishement but this did not, of course, extend to federal cases tried in the state.) Luckily the guy pleaded after my being on edge for 5 months. 

Anyway, I learned you can’t just say you are against capital punishment.  You have to PROVE that you have been actively against it for quite some time prior to being notified.  Examples are donating money to appropriate organizations, attending meetings or rallies, having friends and relatives who’ve done the same, etc. So if you are against capital punishment, you might want to start working on documenting that.

Sixtieslibber—It’s really not a question of getting out of a capital case for me—I didn’t want to sit on a capital case, but I wasn’t just trying to get out of jury duty and capital case was a good excuse. Knowing that my vote could sentence someone to death would fundamentally ding my ability to be fair and impartial and that bothered me and I wanted out for that reason.  If they want to put me on a jury anyway, bully for them, but I won’t return a guilty verdict, no matter the evidence. You don’t want that person sitting on a jury. I wouldn’t want that person sitting on a jury. The point of the jury is that it should be impartial, and my belief that the death penalty is a wrong-headed, fundamentally racist, classist, sexist institution means I can’t be impartial when deliberating on a case where execution is a possible result of my deliberation, and that would be a miscarriage of justice. I mean, I don’t want to send someone to death, but I also don’t want a criminal (esp a capital criminal) walking free. If a judge still wants me on the bench… well, ok. But they can’t say they weren’t warned.

I’ve been summoned for jury duty twice: once in county court and once in municipal court. I made it to voir dire in the county court, but my number was high enough that even after peremptory excusals and excusals for cause, I didn’t make it into the jury box. I did sit on a trial jury in the municipal court which was a DUI case. Not surprisingly, of the six jury members, only two of us (me and other person) were actively working people. The other four were all retirees. Sometimes that makes me wonder how juries might get skewed if most of the people who have the time to sit on them are people in specific demographic categories.

You might get empaneled on a civil case.  The lawyers for the plaintiff/defense won’t care much about what you think of authority.

keshmeshi:  Even in civil cases the lawyers will care about what you think of authority or what knowledge you might have outside of the case itself. 

I was called for jury duty once and was in voir dire for a slip and fall case against a supermarket.  I was working as a paralegal at the time (and, no, that didn’t get me a blanket excuse form serving).  The plaintiff’s lawyer asked if I knew more than the average person about torts and damages. I answered that I did but not from my paralegal work (which was in a utility law practice) but that I’d also worked as a copyeditor for Matthew Bender (a legal publisher). I said further that I worked in the trial and evidence group and named a number of the books I worked with—all known by the lawyers. The plaintiff’s lawyer looked at the defendant’s lawyer, they both looked at the judge (who nodded his head) and the plaintiff’s lawyer looked back at me and said I was excused. 

Tyro:  There was a fad a few decades ago for having open classrooms, with walls that could be moved and reconfigured. It was pioneered by the education departments in colleges as a way to enhance education and help students. Elementary education goes through fads quite regularly.

I was called up in February to be part of the pool for the trial of Alex Youshock, a teen boy who attempted a rampage on his former high school with pipe bombs and a chainsaw.  On the first day, the judge told us all that he expected the case to last two months, and that all he’d do that day was process prospective jurors’ requests to be excused for hardship.  He ended up granting most of them, including mine, which I thought was a long shot.  My read is he just didn’t want people who really didn’t want to be there for 2 months.

Just to finish the story: the kid got convicted of one count of attempted murder, and of exploding a destructive device in an act of terrorism, possession of a destructive device in a public place, carrying a concealed dagger, and carrying a concealed explosive, with deadlocks on two of the charges (one count of attempted murder, one of detonating an explosive with intent to kill). 

But then there was a brief insanity phase where the defense alleged he was schizophrenic and because of this unable to tell wrong from right.  The jury deadlocked 11-1 sane/insane, so in the end it was declared a mistrial.  The prosecution wanted to retry the sanity phase, but ended up making a deal with the defense where the kid is sent to a mental institution, but if he’s ever released he goes to prison.

She hasn’t treated the Church with respect, along with posting about their documented transgressions against children and families from an atheist POV, that’s not demonstrating a bias per se.

I’ve never read anything where she said, “All Catholics hate kittens and rainbows and should be punished accordingly.” I’d agree that her post don’t necessarily demonstrate a bias. Could her blogging and writing about the Church’s failings and crimes really get her excused for bias?

I got to the box for a murder jury in Kalamazoo one time, but I got bounced by the prosecutor on one of his prememptory(? The ones for no reason) challenges. I think my sins were being a newspaper reporter and having covered the court system in a different town.

See, if I were on a murder jury in Michigan, it wouldn’t bother me as much because Michigan is not a death penalty state.

Oops, I meant to add. That jury took them a long time to seat because there were only a quarter of the jury pool who claimed they hadn’t heard of it.

Two elderly people and their elderly daughter had been murdered in their home in a rural area about ten years before and there’d been a lot of media coverage when it happened. The family made a huge effort in the early 00s to put up this poster seeking leads in every convienence store in west Michigan. Then they’d arrested, tried and convicted some of the people involved, with a bunch of media coverage. Then, they’d arrested a couple more and THAT was the case I’d been called for. The judge had everyone form a huge line and go up and tell him what you knew about the case. Which took quite a while.

See, if I were on a murder jury in Michigan, it wouldn’t bother me as much because Michigan is not a death penalty state.

Never has been, either. Wiki claims Michigan was the first English-speaking political entity to abolish the death penalty, but we haven’t executed anyone since we became a state in 1836.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment_in_Michigan

I have been called for jury duty exactly once in roughly 35 years of eligibility. A civil case. I had always kind of wanted the experience in a good-citizen, civic-duty kind of way and because I thought it might be interesting. Those illusions disappeared pretty quickly. It certainly wasn’t the worst experience of my life as the yakking woman on the cell phone said, but I was utterly disgusted by the process. The experience was a steep plunge in the long, slippery slope that has brought me to hate almost everything about our economic, social and political systems. The bullying judge, the incompetence, the lying and dishonesty, the contempt for the jury pool were all sickening. That was just the selection phase, as obviously they didn’t want me on a jury. If it ever happens again, I will do just about anything to get out of it.

Another trial lawyer here.  I would be SO excited to have Amanda on my jury.  And it would be so cool because we don’t actually know each other (I know her but she doesn’t know me) so she wouldn’t get booted for cause on that basis. 

I don’t know much about the mechanics of jury selection in NY but I think Amanda may be right that her chances of being selected are low, just because the chances of a particular member of the jury pool even being called (and then seated) are somewhat low.  (My jury pools usually have about 100 people with only 20 - 40 being called as potential jurors). 

But if she is called, I don’t see any particular reason why Amanda wouldn’t be seated.  It wouldn’t necessarily even come out that she is an opinionated person with a blog and, even if it did, that wouldn’t necessarily get her booted for cause and the lawyers might run out of peremptories before they get to her, OR they might dislike other jurors or more, or maybe both sides will like her for one reason or the other.

People always think that they will likely get booted and it is not necessarily the case.  Lawyers always that they won’t make onto the jury but my last trial had a jury with TWO practicing trial lawyers and ONE J.D.

Last time I was called it was for, from the limited information they told us, a sexual assault case without a lot of physical evidence. I was excused on what I’m pretty sure was a peremptory challenge. My wife is an attorney (not in litigation or criminal law) and her best idea was that they let me go because I have a young daughter and that might bias me against the accused. I’m not sure about that but I don’t have any better guesses.

Just for some reading pleasure, here are the jury duty anecdotes from my family.

In my case above, I really did want off; I was working as a contractor, so I lost a day’s pay when I showed up and would lose pay for each day I was on the jury.  Judge didn’t care about that, said I made enough to afford to take a week without pay.  Thanks, your honor, I assume you’re working this for free, too?

My father ended up on a grand jury in Morris County, New Jersey, for six months.  It met once every two weeks for four hours.  It was mainly to indict people for theft, etc.

My sister was on a jury back in the late 1980’s where she was a solitary holdout.  Two men were pulled over for DWB and were alleged to be drug runners, as the police “found” cocaine in the car.  The men stated they were stock brokers who worked on Wall Street, and the police planted the evidence.  After my sister hung that jury, they were re-tried and convicted.  They appealed, and had the case reversed when it was discovered that these cops were planting evidence on minority drivers to boost their records.
Out of 24 jurors, they convinced 23 on he-said/she-said where one was a cop and one was a minority.

About five years ago, a friend of mine was summoned to voir dire in a civil case in Manhattan.  They were given a list of names and asked if they knew any of those names—one of those names was mine.  (I have a moderately common Scottish surname.)  He said he knew one of the names, and was excused.  I received some email from him asking if I was visiting New York that week.

Turns out my father was a witness in that civil case.

Well, 44 @3:07, maybe they frown on conquering most of Asia and slaughtering millions. Or fermented mare’s milk.

the contempt for the jury pool

Oh, you mean the partial disrobing?  Next time I get summoned, I’m wearing suspenders—it has more metal than my belt, but they can’t be easily removed and it will hold up my trousers.

Witless—he only slaughters those who disrepected him…  Like the Kwarazm.

I agree with Laurie that the chances of any individual person being selected for a jury are pretty small.  As a trial lawyer, I can say that even if you are booted, it might not be for the reason you think.  Honestly, you can use a peremptory strike for almost any reason, as long as it isn’t race or gender, and different lawyers have different ideas about what makes a good or bad juror, and some of those depend on the type of case.  A lot of intuition and guesswork is involved. 

Normal excuses for cause: juror knows the plaintiff, defendant, judge, or one of the attorneys or witnesses in the case; juror has had some experience in the past that would make it difficult to be impartial (example: juror or family member has been victim of a violent assault in a case involving a violent assault); juror is or is related to law enforcement officials such that it would be difficult to be impartial; juror has prior knowledge of the case and is not able to be impartial. 

Weirdest for-cause excuse I’ve seen—one potential juror told the judge that he had been assaulted by another juror and wouldn’t feel comfortable serving on the same jury.

#32 wrote: “If they want to put me on a jury anyway, bully for them, but I won’t return a guilty verdict, no matter the evidence.”

I accept that you feel that way right now.  But if it ever comes down to it and you did end up on the jury for a capital case, I doubt that you’d be willing to break the law.

I was on a jury.  Some guy ran a red light and hit a med student.

Being Chicagoans, we blamed the victim 10% for not looking for people running the light at 1am.  Because you should know better.  And we were assholes about not paying his “doctor” bill since it was his dad and his dad told him to take an advil.  Like that was advice you could only get from a doctor.  The bill was goofy, too.  They’d used liquid paper to white out some charge, so we just tossed it.

It took two days, so we weren’t a happy crew.

As for open pod classrooms…that’s what my kids have.  It’s what the high priced magnet school got in the 70s as top notch new dangled education.  Now they use bookcases and cubbies to create “rooms”.

I was on a jury for a civil case (someone got hit by a car while riding his bike and sued). There was a huge pool of people and then we were split up into 4 smaller courtrooms for separate cases. Selection was basically going right down the front row with some exceptions. I was in the front row.

The case took five days, most of which was sitting in the jury room while the lawyers had what seemed to be 50,000 sidebar discussions; they always claimed these would take 10 minutes, but they ALWAYS ended up being at least 30 minutes, and often lasted an hour or more. The case itself sucked too, frankly, and nobody went home happy.

The last time i went for jury duty, I didn’t get called.  However, it was a drug case, and the judge made a ten minute speech to the jury pool in which he seemed to be dancing around the concept that if we thought the drug laws were stupid, we should mention this if called.

Amanda wrote:

Dave, the chance that I’ll actually be sitting in a jury box strikes me as super low.

Probably so: you are at least somewhat famous, and they won’t want that.  But writing about what experiences you do have waiting might be interesting.

Mighty Ponygirl wrote:

If they want to put me on a jury anyway, bully for them, but I won’t return a guilty verdict, no matter the evidence. You don’t want that person sitting on a jury. I wouldn’t want that person sitting on a jury. The point of the jury is that it should be impartial, and my belief that the death penalty is a wrong-headed, fundamentally racist, classist, sexist institution means I can’t be impartial when deliberating on a case where execution is a possible result of my deliberation, and that would be a miscarriage of justice. I mean, I don’t want to send someone to death, but I also don’t want a criminal (esp a capital criminal) walking free. If a judge still wants me on the bench… well, ok. But they can’t say they weren’t warned.

You could vote to convict without having to worry about a capital sentence.  All capital sentences are handed down by the jury, and that vote has to be unamimous; 11 to 1 in favor of the needle still means life without parole.

Some more thoughts on jury service:

Even though losing time out of your life is probably frustrating as hell, it is worthwhile to think of it as a feminist experience.  I once worked in an old courthouse where the chairs in the jury box were all designed for people of a certain heigh (i.e. men) such that women jurors of average height had to sit with their feet dangling off the floor!  It really wasn’t that long ago that women were either barred from jury service or encouraged to opt out.  Having a mix of the sexes is SO important!

I would also encourage women jurors to vie for the foreperson position.  I’ve noticed in the roughly 60 jury trials I’ve conducted in my career that women are hardly ever the foreperson if there is any choice in the matter.  In at least 20-30 of my cases, the judge would pick a juror at random and ask that juror if he or she was willing to serve as foreperson.  The women who were chosen would ALWAYS say, “No” and the men who were chosen would always say, “Yes.”  I once saw a judge ask all seven of the women on the panel to serve as foreperson and they all said no until he finally picked a man, who said yes.  In other cases, the jurors pick their own foreperson back in the deliberation and then it is always a man as well.

Also, this may be common sense but please don’t blog about the trial (much as I would love it) until well after it’s over.  You don’t want to cause a mistrial or get booted off in the middle due to public comments about the proceedings!

Dana—is that state-by-state or federal law?

I got called for jury duty once.  Death Penalty case.  I am not “death qualified,” that’s for sure.  There’s the fact that I knew at least four of the six lawyers.  And my comments to the judge that the instructions to follow the law and not emotion flew in the face of what the death penalty was all about, which is pure emotion.  And my known history among the judge and those lawyers of my representing someone until, oh, 12:14 a.m. one winter morning, when he was executed.  I hadn’t gotten him on death row, but I didn’t get him off it, either.  (I didn’t begin the representation until 12 years after the crime.)  Oh, and although we didn’t get to the facts of the case, I knew some of them, too, since the shooting was across the street from my former polling place.

Excused for cause.  Fin. 

And the case either pled, or they got life.  No one gets death in New Castle County, or, at least, in 1996, no one had, for at least 35 years.

Back in the late 90s, I got on the jury for a civil case involving police brutality. This was right in the middle of the Abner Louima situation. And also around that time, Amnesty International released a report detailing use of excessive force and other human rights violations by the NYPD. I wasn’t even trying to get off the jury; I just honestly explained that given what was going on at NYPD, I would have a lot of trouble being impartial towards the officer who was being sued. I remember saying that I went to the protests and talked to activists about the Amnesty International report. So I’m sure the plaintiff’s lawyer was all about getting me on the case, because they dragged me in front of the judge and I got a little lecture on impartiality. I told the judge I’d try but it would be a struggle. In any case, once the jury was selected, they settled the case, which I hear happens often in civil cases.

Jury duty in Brooklyn used to be a right pain in the ass. If I remember correctly, you had to do 5 days, business hours. If you got into a jury pool and were dismissed, you had to go back. If that happened twice, or if you were empanelled and the case was settled, then they’d cut you loose. But I think they couldn’t call you again for 5 years if you actually got on the jury.

I worked for the John Howard Society. I will therefore be one of the first prosecutorial vetoes if I ever get called again.* That’s almost as undesirable as being a prominent social justice blogger!

*Was recused the first time because I was moving out of province shortly and no longer eligible.

Years ago, I was called to jury in New York (I brought books!) but was only questioned as a potential juror for some sort of medical case.

I revealed that my sister is a doctor, and when asked something to the effect that if I trusted doctors, I replied “No.”

Which may, or may not, have had anything to do with the case being settled between the parties that day, before it could come to trial.

But we potential jurors were thanked for our service all the same, and I, at least, was released.

Hey, they asked, and I was truthful.

But I think they couldn’t call you again for 5 years if you actually got on the jury.

I wish King County had those rules.  I was called up again less than a year after I served.  I immediately responded, pretty much telling them there was no way in hell I was coming back after 11 months, so they released me.

Keshmeshi, I’m not even sure if it was really a stated rule or an urban legend. I know I was never called again. My beef was sitting there for days and days. When I got called in Denver it was not a full week and not a full business day (I think it was 2 or 3 days and if you weren’t called before lunch they let you go). But Brooklyn is way bigger than Denver so obviously there’s more need.

I’m out so it’s irrelevant.  I know better than to break the law by writing about a case you’re actually sitting on a jury for while the case is in session, but even if I didn’t know that, they REALLY make sure you know that.  But yeah, the second they started questioning people, I was like, “One way or another, I’m out of here by five.”  It was abundantly clear there was no way they would use me.

And really, I actually wouldn’t mind sitting on a jury, even for a case like this.  It was just bad timing.

kesh, they told us that they’re not supposed to call you for 8 years.  Maybe it’s changed since you called?  But they told us that we’re now off the hook for 8 years.

MA has a pretty good system- “one day, one trial”. If you show up at the courthouse, even if you’re not impaneled you’re off the hook for three years. Usually it’s longer- I’ve lived here 20 years, only been called 3 times, and only actually had my number come up to go to a courtroom once.

Everybody go read James #45 again. That’s heavy.

Scott K - only if it’s not the grandjury.  My spouse was on the grand jury in Salem MA for Middlesex County for 3 months - a full day M & Tu with as long as it took to wrap up the week’s cases on F.  The building was old, uncomfortable (HVAC, furnishings, lighting, etc) and the nearest parking lot sometimes flooded at hightide (and it wasn’t free).  It was on a different commuter line from the one that goes through our city and is more than 30 miles each way from our house.  They paid each juror something like $25/day. 
I was called into the historic courthouse in Newbury Port - wooden benches like church pews, out of date HVAC, insanely high ceilings.  No wifi, but they didn’t take away my book and the cases all settled once they saw enough people had responded to their summons to impanel the 3 juries needed that day, so all of us got to leave by noon without being enpanelled. 
Mid-2000s for both.