Jury ramble

Can’t remember where I read this but I was surprised to learn that 67% of people called to do jury service get excused – I assume this isn’t because they’re calling a load of ‘duds’ (I don’t mean this as derogatory, I mean people automatically excused because of mental, physical or proximity reasons) but that people are actually writing in to get excused.

Long time readers of my blog will know my history with jury service … how can the same person get called 3 times in 18 months?… hence my interest in the behaviour of others when it comes to the summons.

So, looking at it in reverse, this means that peoples’ futures that are decided at the hand of a jury are in the hands of 33% of potential jurors. Does this mean that the jury is actually pretty skewed/screwed because with such a low percentage of people that go on jury service that they must all be a certain type of people? Perhaps people who can’t get out of it – majority of these would probably be public servants and by in large they are certain type of people; perhaps people who want to do jury service – likely people who are particularly staunch about their civic responsibilities or; people from the list of people who haven’t tried to get excused hence me being called 3 times in 18 months! Not really a point here, just a ramble.