Jury Duty

[19annie86]

My baby was born on 30th March 2022, I have been called for jury duty 13th April this year, my maternity leave was until 22nd March this year now I'm currently using my annual leave and bank holiday entitlement until May.

I haven't secured a nursery position for my baby as everywhere is full, and I have no one to look after my baby, do you think I can be excused from jury duty, I have already emailed them but waiting on reply

Unlikely to be excused.

You can defer once I think.

You'll probably be able to defer but expect to be called again within a year or so

You can request to defer for up to a year and will usually be asked to provide possible dates you could attend.

We call it jury service in the U.K. this Americanism seems to be seeping in and for some reason I just can’t abide it. Apologies but it just seems like people suddenly are calling it jury duty! Rant over. Apologies

Anyway......

You can ask to defer.

tell them you are breastfeeding and have no child care.

Are you in the uk?

I was called when dc1 was just a few weeks old. I was bf so there was no way that I could attend. I explained and was given a new date more or less a year to the day later - not long after I had returned to work!!

When I was called again the year before last (for my second spell of jury service!) I had to ask to defer as the first week coincided with a school holiday. Work had already allocated all of the permitted leave to other members of staff. so me also being absent would have caused problems with service provision. I had to provide 3 alternative start dates and was very quickly given the first one of those.

If they do let you defer, you can expect to be called again pretty soon so you need to come up with a plan. May’s not long away, how are you planning on returning to work without childcare being sorted?

@Muchtoomuchtodo Why can't they just move on to someone else entirely? I've seen threads with people who have jury duty on their bucket list!

Excused no, deferred highly likely in these circs

Because you'd have a non representative Jury made up exclusively of retired or unemployed people, so potentially biased rather tgan representing s full spectrum of views.

I was called for jury duty when I'd just started training for my new job - intensive training in first few weeks and wouldn't be able to catch up if I missed it. Was deferred. Then got pregnant and was called again just after baby was born, explained I would be BF etc etc and they excused me.

A jury is supposed to be a representative sample of the population.

That’ll never be achieved if anyone who asks to not go for a solvable issue is simply excused from doing their civic duty.

In the UK you can defer once but when you are called the next time you have to go

You can usually defer to any date within the next 12 months.

We do do we? I did jury duty in 2010 and, as well as jury service, it was very much called jury DUTY by everyone involved, at several points, including the staff. Don't be such a patronising twit next time.

YOU call it jury service.

Fixed that for you.

I’ve only ever known it as jury duty (Scotland)