teacher arrested for missing jury duty

[philip964]

http://www.click2houston.com/news/teach ... index.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

A junior high teacher was arrested for missing jury duty by Montgomery County Judge Kelly Chase. She had called in to reschedule as she needed to attend an important event for a student she had tutored for over a year as the student was now cancer free, but was apparently told no by the court.

She is now out of a job.

[talltex]

http://www.click2houston.com/news/teach ... index.html

A junior high teacher was arrested for missing jury duty by Montgomery County Judge Kelly Chase. She had called in to reschedule as she needed to attend an important event for a student she had tutored for over a year as the student was now cancer free, but was apparently told no by the court.

She is now out of a job.

Temporarily it sounds like. What happened to her is not really unusual...I've seen Judges send deputies out to bring in summoned jurors that failed to show up numerous times...in fact, at almost every single case. The Judge goes thru the summoned roll call...usually twice...then instructs the Bailiff to have those who failed to show up brought before the court immediately. The fact that she called in and told them about needing to go to attend the event doesn't eliminate the requirement to appear unless she was granted an exemption ahead of time. She obviously was not. It sounds like she had already gotten excused a couple of times prior to this summons and they probably thought she was just making up another story to avoid jury duty and told her "no". The jury summons lists all the requirements for automatic exemption from service and if you qualify you may fill out the exemption card and send it back in...otherwise you are required by law to appear at the court at the set date and time, and the Judge will ask if there are any potential jurors that feel they should be exempted from service at that time and will listen to their reason and may or may not excuse them based on what is said. Simply not showing up is almost guaranteed to get you a ride in a patrol car.

[Ericstac]

^^ I'm not buying it. How can the judge or court system or anyone for that matter take you to jail or hold you in contempt or whatever solely on the faith of our poor United States Postal Service. They can't. I get incorrect mail daily so I know these 'summons' are being lost in the mail as well. They would need to do receipt confirmation on all of them before anything could really happen.

Now this ladies case, she called, so that is admitting she got the summons.

Edit, just went and read it. It sounds like she had already been selected to be on the jury to me, and then tried bailing out.

[jmra]

I think it would be neat to serve. Closest I've gotten was a notice I received from another state right after I had moved.

[steve817]

I think it would be neat to serve. Closest I've gotten was a notice I received from another state right after I had moved.

Get picked for one and you will get over it really quick. Of course mine was a civil suit between two parties that neither side would tell the whole truth if you had a gun to their heads. I may feel differently over a criminal case.

[gthaustex]

I think it would be neat to serve. Closest I've gotten was a notice I received from another state right after I had moved.

I seem to regularly get notices for jury duty from various courts, including Federal. I make all the effort to show up to jury selection and when interviewed by the defense have always gotten struck from the pool. Something about prior LE experience....

At this point, I just assume that I will waste my day and not get picked, ever. Probably for the best anyway. Knowing my luck I would get something really tedious.

[Keith B]

I think it would be neat to serve. Closest I've gotten was a notice I received from another state right after I had moved.

I seem to regularly get notices for jury duty from various courts, including Federal. I make all the effort to show up to jury selection and when interviewed by the defense have always gotten struck from the pool. Something about prior LE experience....
At this point, I just assume that I will waste my day and not get picked, ever. Probably for the best anyway. Knowing my luck I would get something really tedious.

That usually happens to me on criminal trials. However, in the last Voir Dire I was selected. It was a case against a local business owner for violation of the city temporary sign ordinance, so they didn't care one way or the other on my previous LE experience. The defendant represented himself and the old adage 'having a fool for a lawyer' when you do that played in here big time. I ended up as head juror and we took a whole 5 minutes to find the guy guilty and set his fine. That included the time we took to introduce ourselves to each other.

In this ladies case, while I feel for her and the fact she wanted to get out of jury duty, the time to ask for an exemption is before you are selected for the panel, not afterward. Even then the judge may not release you. If she failed to show, then it would be contempt, like it or not.

[Keith B]

On another note, even sometimes when you have been excused the info doesn't make it back to the judge. My father-in-law was self employed and taking time away from his job meant no one on his team would be able to work, so multiple people would be sitting idle. He requested to be released from selection and was granted the exemption.

On the day of court I received a phone call from my Brother-In-Law (my side of the family) who was then the Chief of Police saying the Judge was issuing a warrant for my Father-in-Law due to non-appearance. He wanted to know why he hadn't shown up. I told him I knew he had gotten granted the exemption and to check with the court clerk. When they did they found out quickly there had been an error and he should have been removed from the list but wasn't.