AIBU to to expect to be excused from jury duty?! Request to be excused denied!😱

[TotallyScrewed]

Like many others the last 10 months or so has been an absolute shitshow😅 Partner and I both work, have been homeschooling a 7 year old and we have two preschoolers who’ve been at home with us for long stretches of time when nursery is shut.

Now I’ve been called for jury duty!!!😱 I thought, well, SURELY my request for excusal will be approved!

• I’m homeschooling
• When nursery is open the little ones need collecting at 3 and I am the only one who can do it (no family nearby and husband works late)
• I’m also a university lecturer slap bang in the middle of term. I know work is supposed to give you time off for this but I would feel bad for my students (especially the dissertation ones!) suddenly disappearing on them!!!

I explained all these things and my request for excusal was refused!!! I’m quite shocked to be honest. I do totally understand the importance of jury duty and in normal times I would be so happy to oblige but I’m already barely keeping my head above water as it is😭😭😭

Has anyone successfully been excused and if so on what grounds?!

Also, vote away!
IABU: There’s nothing special about you, do your bloody jury duty.
IANBU: You’ve suffered enough and should be excused😂

@MrsHuntGeneNotJeremyObviously

Agree that the courts should properly finance the costs of jury service if they want truly representative juries - and provide childcare. We are in a pandemic and the woman has small children - she can't pull child care out of her arse. And I don't see why her DH should have to use holiday time - he wasn't called and won't be able to reclaim that time from work. People like me should be doing jury service - my DH can WFH and our youngest is 13, so childcare not a problem. People on trial deserve jurors who can concentrate, not people worried about their DC or work. I feel really sorry for the OP. Hope you can defer. If not, I'd definitely turn up with the toddlers in tow. The court should provide childcare on site, so mother's aren't excluded from what is an important service.

Her DH should step up because they’re his children and they need looking after when she’s busy.

The court isn’t excluding mothers from jury duty most of the time. It’s this bloody notion that men’s jobs are too important to expect them to juggle the school and nursery pick up for a couple of weeks so the woman can do jury duty.

Unless the OP’s husband has a critical job there’s no reason to defer her. There’s certainly no reason to excuse her from jury duty for good - I served on a jury for a long and fucking horrific case and we still weren’t excused from doing it again forever!

Juries still go on despite the issues you have been giving.

I appreciate it’s shit. But most people are in the same position than you. If they excuse 50% of people on childcare issues (and others...) they are going to struggle to keep the tribunals going!

Has anyone ever been excused from jury service in childcare issue? I’m not quite sure tbh.

My mum deferred hers because it was a couple of weeks before my due date and she was worried she would get put on a long case (I'm sure they would have noticed the bump and not given her a complicated trial). They didn't call her again for about 20 years!

Btw I agree that the way they will seen it is that you have a DH that can and should step up to look after his own dcs.

I suspect you have been the one to bear the brunt of the pandemic, doing the homeschooling whilst working etc etc etc.
Maybe it’s time to stop discounting his input and expect him to act like a parent and do what you have done for the last year or so. (He could also take some hols. With a bit of luck, it won’t last more than 2 weeks)

I really wouldn't want to see a jury system where they were not able to require a proper cross section of people to be jurors. It should not be the preserve of those with no children or without difficulties in taking time off. We need, really need, representative juries

Asking to be excused because of temporary childcare issues in a pandemic is such a no-no.

But it might be a reason to defer. You can't always clear yourself of other responsibilities at the exact time they call you, and that is why deferral exists.

But OP states she is a university lecturer. Full time university lecturers is an occupational group which can be excused (just as school teachers can be). That does not mean they have to be excused though, but this does seem something of an anomalous decision. Did the university support your assertion that this was a time when detriment from your absence was unusually high?

You know that as a juror it’s ‘critical’ work and you could send your kid into school?

I have deferred twice! Once when my boss wrote and told them I was his only employee and he couldn’t run the office without me and the second time I was in the middle of my professional exams. This was a loooooong time ago though so I imagine that I will get a called again at some point in the not too distant future.

@ememem84

I’d love to be called for jury duty.

I was glad I did my 2 weeks but there’s a lot of “hurry up and wait”

So many people sitting around doing nothing for vast periods of time, getting their wages paid by the Govt, it’s an appallingly inefficient system

@grey12

YANBU because of Covid. Honestly it is a challenge to do anything regarding children atm.

Definitely try to get it deferred.

Eh? Covid isn't going anywhere. Courts can't grind to a halt "because of covid". Yes, it's a challenge but there are always challenges. I bet the OPs husband would happily do it but she can't apparently because all the burden of childcare/homeschooling falls to her.

Also, all those who are worried it would be too distressing, you'll need a GP note to say that you are of a particularly nervous disposition if you can't hear the facts of a criminal trial without having a breakdown.

When does your jury duty start? I would have thought that there's a reasonable prospect that either schools will be back by then or that school will take your child because doing jury service is essential. If they won't, ask them to write a letter for the court confirming that they won't take them and explaining why. But I bet it won't come to that.

On the other excuses I am afraid you do need to think more flexibly. Your husband should adjust his work hours or take some leave if necessary so that you can do it. It's not always a full 2 weeks and you won't necessarily be there all day, it's just a pain not knowing. My husband has deferred due to work commitments (work wrote a letter) but when his next date came through I just had to do his nursery runs as well as my own, and rejig my work around that. It won't necessarily take a full 2 weeks, you may well be let go early on days you are not called, or dismissed altogether after a few days. I know some jobs are genuinely inflexible, but there also seem to be many where a man doing it regards it as inflexible, whereas a woman doing the same role manages to fit in parents' evenings and nursery pickups.

Agree with pp re taking kids with you. You'll be back home in an instant.

@MsWarrensProfession

Do try to get a letter from HR.

A young man at my office was doing jury service. We were struggling to do without him but I have an over developed sense of public duty and decided we could muddle through for two weeks. He then got called up for a six week trial. He explained that his work wouldn’t possibly be able to manage without him for that long, but the official took one look at this baby-faced lad in trackie bottoms and a somewhat scruffy and laid back demeanour and told him he was having a laugh and should suck it up. When he came back to the office to tell me I hit the roof but HR wrote a magic letter saying “yes I know he looks like he’s the junior trainee fries cooker at KFC but he’s actually a very highly educated and skilled professional in a small department and no we can’t possibly spare him for six weeks”. Worked like a charm.

Same here. When I was called up, I got a letter a couple of days before the start telling me that there was a 6 week trial due to start and anyone who couldn't commit to a longer trial had to get their excuses ready.

My department head wrote a letter saying that, while they were able to spare me for the standard 2 weeks, they were unable to do so for 6+ weeks with virtually no notice and the judge grudgingly accepted this when I got as far as being selected for that trial.

Agree about the criminal inefficiency of the process. In 2 weeks, I spent less than 3 days actively being in a jury (court and deliberations) and one of the two trials I was in didn't even reach a verdict because it was a nonsense trial that should have never gone to court.

I'd just do it. Imagine deferring and then being called in the summer holidays. No nurseries or schools for childcare then and you'd lose two weeks of your annual leave! Sorry, but I think your DH needs to step up and collect the younger ones from nursery. He can look after them until you return home and catch up with some work in the evening if he really needed to. Send eldest to school. I'm sure your students would cope for a couple of weeks without you, especially if you made sure they were all ok the week before jury service and knew they could contact you in the evenings if they absolutely had to.

I really don't understand how I could show good judgement against my fellow citizens. I forget what people told me or complicated matters that take several steps (or I find them complicated) and when we watch movies I need subtitles as I can't catch everything or I don't understand regional variations or everything said although my English is meant to be good

Don't take your kids with you. That's pathetic. Discuss with school and nursery and get your DH to step up a bit.

I don't think the husband's job is more important - if he was called, I'd be saying he should go. But he wasn't and the court therefore won't compensate him for loss of pay/holiday time. Families do organise their lives around their jobs and childcare and it's often very finely balanced. If the court needs to upset that balance, then the state ought to make it so that jurors are helped as much as possible and not left out of pocket or unable to concentrate because they are worried about their other commitments.
I think people on trial deserve jurors who can focus properly.
Given the OP is a university lecturer, she ought to be allowed to defer - students have been really screwed over this past year, paying for courses and accommodation when they can't go to university. They deserve their proper lecturer, not something the uni has had to cobble together.

I’ve just been reading articles in The Times about when women were first allowed to do jury duty. Please try to ask for deferral. Your students who are doing dissertations in the future will have to cope without you.

I was excused, I'd just given birth, when the jury service letter came through the post.

Are in person court sessions with juries being held currently?

Watch the episode of Small Axe about the Mangrove 9 and have a think about how important representative juries are to the justice system.

This thread makes me cross.

Why are you triumphant, @MsWarrensProfession , that you managed to get this “highly educated and skilled professional” out of jury service? Such a person would surely have been an asset to a trial?

Idiots who are suggesting that the only people who should be bothered with doing jury service are people twiddling their thumbs at home.

If nobody rearranged their days for a week or so no one would sit on the jury, no cases would be heard. Your employer has to give you time off. Someone can cover your work schedule. Your partner can cover childcare.

I was excused by explaining I had 3 kids (2primary and one toddler) and dh works long hours/couldn't help, no family near by and nursery were prepared to write a letter to say they couldn’t offer any extra days/hours (which was true).

It’s not just one day for a hospital appt or something, cases can last up to 6 weeks. The financial allowances wouldn’t even cover one child at nursery so employing a nanny is not an option (even if you found one). I would be happy to do it when all the kids at school, but it’s just too much to expect at that stage in your life and not fair on very small children to suddenly not see their mother for weeks on end. Covid just multiplies all these issues.

If they’d refused I would turn up with the toddler on the first day and ask where the crèche is... see what they say.

@MrsHuntGeneNotJeremyObviously

I don't think the husband's job is more important - if he was called, I'd be saying he should go. But he wasn't and the court therefore won't compensate him for loss of pay/holiday time. Families do organise their lives around their jobs and childcare and it's often very finely balanced. If the court needs to upset that balance, then the state ought to make it so that jurors are helped as much as possible and not left out of pocket or unable to concentrate because they are worried about their other commitments. I think people on trial deserve jurors who can focus properly. Given the OP is a university lecturer, she ought to be allowed to defer - students have been really screwed over this past year, paying for courses and accommodation when they can't go to university. They deserve their proper lecturer, not something the uni has had to cobble together.

Agree with this

I was teaching when I was called to the Old Bailey. School said all I had to do was say I was a teacher and I would be sent home. We were called into a courtroom and the judge announced ‘this is a three week trial and unless you have a holiday booked, I’m not excusing anyone’. He said he was sick of professional people getting out of jury service. I think they should raise the exclusion from 70 to 75. I wouldn’t have minded doing it again once I had retired.

I’d love to be called for jury duty.

I have been twice and it was boring as f*ck. Mind you, I was amused that the guy in our court for credit card fraud, was wanted in different courts all through the day! It is mostly boring, a lot of sitting around and being herded about. Oh and one of your fellow jury persons will be a complete know it all.