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Originally Posted by aninjamom
I've showed up for jury duty a couple of times in Seminole Co, and mostly just sat and crocheted for a day or two. The only time I had to get out of it was when I was a caregiver for my husband, who had Alzheimer's. Jury duty might be inconvenient, but it is a crucial part of our legal system, and is a civic duty. If no one served on juries, we'd have to go to another system. I can't think of an alternative that I'd want if I had to go to trial! And how long would you want to sit in a cell waiting? You hear stories about the slowness of the system; trying to get jurors is probably a big part of the problem.
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My situation is similar but it is two parents and a dog. The dog is great help sitting on laps and the like.
Sumter County has sent me Jury Summons three times now in the 13 years we have been here and on May 19, 2014 I did go down to what was a 13 week case but the defendant plead guilty so I did not have to answer any questions. We never got out of the jury waiting room. I did e-mail them my concerns about my hobby though and talking about that.
In 2014, the judge did ask if any of the jurors were lawyers or law enforcement people. I am neither but I do have a JD and my hobby does involve law enforcement-- web-sites for Sheriffs' and other PD and libraries' holdings and web-sites. But I have been very creative in whom I have asked for help in the past almost three decades with this hobby. I did e-mail the Clerk of Court of Sumter County about this hobby a few days ago as well as a few weeks ago.
This was my sixth Jury Duty Summons and I would like to get a seventh. Not until things improve though.
I would have had to hire a nurse to come in as a care giver for my parents to be able to do Jury Service. I do have several nurse friends here near or in the Villages but would not want to burden them.
I could go down there and talk to a Judge in private about my hobby and see what he or she thinks about it. I had questioned some Criminal Intelligence Detectives about it back in 2002 at the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office and they told me they had mixed feeling about it. Both of these cops were homicide detectives if my memory serves. I did this in person at their headquarters in Pinellas Park, FL and also later on the phone and maybe via e-mails.
The hobby involves access to practical information for survivors/victims of crimes on library web-sites and that which is housed in these libraries as well as materials acting as a safety net for the mentally ill. My interest comes from some homicide cases in Reno, Nevada in the 1970s and one from 1963 also from Reno, Nevada. I have some kind of personal connections to these murder cases. I did e-mail the Clerk of Court about these and gave them some links to information about them I believe.