Wednesday, June 30, 2004
I just won the Jury Lottery
Nothing quite like getting a letter with
OFFICIAL JUROR SUMMONS
across the middle.
For the United States District Court.
Could be worse. My first summons ever was for the Federal Court down in Miami (fortunately for me, I was able to get out of that due to being a student at FAU).
Starting August 8th I have to call the court house no earlier than 5:30pm to see if I have to serve the next day; a ritual I have to follow for the following two weeks. There's a form to fill out (using a #2 pencil of course) and the questions are all fairly standard questions like “Have you ever been convicted of a State or Federal crime?” but there were two that just struck me oddly. The first is silly:
And the second was:
Now, question 6 was the “Have you ever been convicted …” question, and honestly, I didn't know how to answer question 7. So I didn't. But in the “REMARKS” section on the back, I wrote the following:
I did not answer #7 since it didn't seem to apply in my case. Answering “yes” would imply that at one point my civil rights were restored, while a “no” answer would imply I don't have civil rights. Since my civil rights were never taken away, they never had to be restored in the first place so I felt that the question does not apply in my case.
Will I have to serve? I'm not sure … the first time I actually went in, I wasn't selected, but the second time I was selected (although the case was settled before it began so we were dismissed), so now I'm figuring I have some chance at being selected. But given that lawyers for both sides tend not to like highly educated people (since they're harder to bamboozle) and I listed eight years of college (never mind I never graduated—the form just requested the number of years) I might not even be considered. Who knows?
But we'll see …
Now, off to mail the form.
