Would you go to jury service?

[grumbler]

This thread is an absolute disaster when it comes to using quote-codes properly.

[Barrister]

Okay, this joke's been done to death by now gentlemen.

[grumbler]

I thought they grabbed prospective jurors off the voter rolls.

You are registered to vote are you not Raz?

I'm pretty sure that my county selects by drivers license registration.  But I don't think that there is a standard, and different jurisdictions can probably do it differently.   Federal courts use voter registration but different districts can add different other sources if needed.

[Barrister]

I'm pretty sure Alberta uses driver's licenses, but Sheriffs can literally just pull people off the street if need be.

[Valmy]

So do you need a job or pay taxes to get a jury summons because I never got one.

not be a member of the armed forces on active duty;

Well, THAT is not true...I've had many colleagues get called for jury duty.

I think the list I pulled is just for Federal Court.

[Barrister]

So do you need a job or pay taxes to get a jury summons because I never got one.

not be a member of the armed forces on active duty;

Well, THAT is not true...I've had many colleagues get called for jury duty.

I think the list I pulled is just for Federal Court.

Again going from experience, the initial jury pool can't cross-reference against any of the disallowed groups.  So for example when we get an initial jury list we will ourselves cross-reference to determine if any potential jurors have criminal records as that would disallow them.

If you are in a disallowed group it doesn't take much more than a phone call to be excused.

[Iormlund]

I thought all you had to do to get ejected from the pool was to hint at knowing the two magic words.

[Caliga]

Yes I would.  It's your duty as a citizen to dole out justice to evildoers. 

I've served on two juries, one criminal and one civil.

[Sheilbh]

So do you need a job or pay taxes to get a jury summons because I never got one.

I've never had one either and I'd quite like to do it.

Although there are no civil juries here so it'd definitely be criminal and at the higher end of offences (Crown Courts only, not magistrates) - so chances are it would actually be really bad.

[grumbler]

Kinda related to the discussions about juries, it turns out that, in the US, there is a 50-square-mile area of Yellowstone Park where no crime can be prosecuted because no jury can be empaneled.  It's sometimes called the Yellowstone Zone of Death in overly-melodramatic terms.

Wiki explains it fully, but the money bit is

The United States District Court for the District of Wyoming is currently the only United States district court to have jurisdiction over parts of multiple states. This is because its jurisdiction includes all of Yellowstone National Park, which extends slightly beyond Wyoming's boundaries into Idaho and Montana. In addition, the federal government has exclusive jurisdiction over the park, so crimes committed in the park cannot be prosecuted under any of the states' laws.

Trials in the district court are normally held at the federal courthouse in Cheyenne, Wyoming. However, the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution decrees that juries in federal criminal cases must be made up of citizens who are from both the district and state where the crime was committed. Because of this, charges for a crime alleged to have been committed in the area of the park in Idaho would have to be tried before a jury consisting entirely of residents of that area, and the trial would also have to take place in that area.

As the Idaho portion of the park is uninhabited, a jury of residents of both the state and district could not be empaneled. As the Constitution guarantees the right to a jury trial, specified three separate times (Article III, Section 2; 6th Amendment; 7th Amendment), a defendant facing any felony or misdemeanor charge, being unable to receive a constitutional trial, could not be legally punished regardless of guilt or innocence.

Wow! 

As a side note, the research into this also led me to find another weird US law:  writing a check for $0.99 or less can be punished with a six-month jail term! 18 US Code blah blah