Jury Service Summons anyone ?

I assume the upper age limit is 75.

I had always fancied doing it until I was called, the case I was allocated was a child abuse case, we were called to the court room and told by the judge that the case was going to last 4/5 weeks and if you didn't think you could commit to that length of time you had to ask to be excused, I was my mother's carer and had made arrangements for 1 /2 weeks but no longer, I told them this and was excused ( thankfully) I haven't been called again and thankfully not been called again. Do they have an upper age limit now?

I would have loved to sit on a Jury. But I’ve never been called.😫

I did Jury Service many years ago, there was a lot of time waiting around so you definitely need a book/kindle. I was called and I was required for a couple of weeks. I'm glad I did it, I did find it interesting.

Bumface

Sago

My husband did it and found it fascinating.
He was quite concerned though that some of the jurors were not very bright, he had to explain an awful lot to them.
I would love to do it.

I have been called twice, once in one county and once in another. Both times were really boring and the cases I was called for were quite trivial.

I too was concerned about the lack of brightness of some of the jurors. One man thought we were all being stupid for discussing the case as "Even an idiot knows it is up to the judge."

My husband has done it too, only once, he was called for a murder and found it very upsetting and traumatic.

Must say I found it disturbing that two female jurors on my panel had made up their minds as to the guilt of the defendant, almost without hearing a single word of evidence.

The rest of us, however, heard quite enough to want to give him the benefit of the doubt, so it was a 10/2 verdict.

I was sorry when I got to the age of 75 and had never been called. I would have been quite interested. My only experience of Court was being a witness to a robbery in our neighbourhood. What I remember is the jury all looking intently at me when I spoke and having to be constantly reminded to address the jury and not the person who asked the question.

Sago

My husband did it and found it fascinating.
He was quite concerned though that some of the jurors were not very bright, he had to explain an awful lot to them.
I would love to do it.

I have been called twice, once in one county and once in another. Both times were really boring and the cases I was called for were quite trivial.

I too was concerned about the lack of brightness of some of the jurors. One man thought we were all being stupid for discussing the case as "Even an idiot knows it is up to the judge."

My husband has done it too, only once, he was called for a murder and found it very upsetting and traumatic.

But vampirequeen it’s only done for a short length of time say 2 years so no they wouldn’t become complacent better than being tried by some of the people you know don’t know their left to their right

NanaTuesday

Arrived home yesterday evening , opened a letter not official looking in anyway ,posted with a 2nd class stamp in white envelope .
Inviting me to Jury service .
I have always wanted to do this, I don’t know why ,but have had conversations about it recently funnily enough ,saying that my time is limited as there is a cut off age limit ☹️
Anyway, cut to the chase .
Just my luck though as I am going to be on holiday on the dates of the summons .
I must admit to being both gutted & relieved at the same time as it was for between 7-10 days at the Coroners Court 😢

To everyone who gave me their thoughts on this , I received an email to say I was excused from service .
I am hoping to be recalled though .

I’ve never been called and being self employed I was quite glad . Now I’m retired I’d really like to do it .
I find the selection process very strange as some people are called several times and others are never called .
As for professional jurors , I think in some cases , they could be helpful. My cousin had a very complicated fraud case . It involved several big financial companies and my cousin although intelligent found it difficult to follow .

25Avalon

You can’t usually not attend jury service without a medical reason. What you can do if you are on holiday is make application to have jury service deferred and you will be called at a later date. I think you can only do this once. I did it because dh was just home from a serious heart operation and got called 6 months later.

It was the most boring experience waiting to see if you were called. On day 3 seven of us were told we weren’t needed and could go home. Cos of dh’s health I was one of the lucky ones

25Avalon ,
Well , I’m sure to find out very soon🤔

I was called up about 20 years ago. I served on a murder case. All members of the jury took the case very seriously and all gave a lot of thought to the evidence and verdict. We had to because we knew that if we found a guilty man innocent then we were not giving justice to the victim but if we found an innocent man guilty we were going to send him to prison for a long, long time.

I don't like the idea of a professional jury. Over time they're bound to become jaded and, unintentionally, second guess the evidence having seen similar so many times before. A jury of peers brings a range of people into service who listen and see the evidence with fresh ears and eyes. We took it very seriously because we were new to the system and also, we wanted to be absolutely sure for our own consciences. A professional jurist (like the barristers and court officials) could end up simply seeing it as just another job. Today a motorist, next week a fraud, next week a burglar etc. In fact they'd have to in order to protect themselves i.e. give a verdict and then move on.

I did a 3 month stint on probably the worlds most boring case.
It was to do with banking and money laundering, and involved us looking at huge files "section 2, subsection 4, paragraph 9" type of thing.
The judge was very amusing, though, but the weight of making the right decision was awful.

Scribbles

I've had to do it twice and, like Kate1949 above, I hated every moment.
The cut-off age is now 75 (since 2016) and, with 18 months to go, I'm hoping to escape without getting caught in the net again.
My late mother, on the other hand, always wanted to do it but never got summoned. She even went into the Crown Court offices once to ask if there was anything she could do to make sure she got called because she thought it unfair that some people missed out on the experience!

I love that your MIL did that , I was begging ing to think it was too late for me as well 😢
Though typically it’s while I am on a very early( for us , as we normally take our GC in Children ) summer holiday 😎

The random nature of call-up for jury service has always fascinated me.

I had two calls, and one trial, within 2 years when I was in my late 50s, but no other member of my family has ever been called for jury duty and at one point I had a staff member who had been called up - and done jury duty, twice by the time she was 25.

If I got called I d suddenly develop Covid luckily I m too old now whoopee my son was called up in NZ and said it was totally boring no one else in my extended family have ever been called

I found it very interesting but wish I had asked our policeman neighbour to teach me about drugs. Despite being around all the clubs in Liverpool in the 60s, I knew absolutely nothing.

The judge was brilliant.

I thought it quite bizarre that after one session in court, I hopped on the bus to go back to the park and ride to go home for the day as the trial had finished for the day.

Also on the downstairs of the bus was another juror, the judge (obviously in his civvies) the defendant and his mother! No one made eye contact….

Would have love to have been called

If it arrived in an ordinary second class envelope and was not signed for then there is no proof it was ever delivered. So if if clashed with a holiday you could probably ignore. Its up to them to prove that you received the summons.

I've had to do it twice and, like Kate1949 above, I hated every moment.
The cut-off age is now 75 (since 2016) and, with 18 months to go, I'm hoping to escape without getting caught in the net again.
My late mother, on the other hand, always wanted to do it but never got summoned. She even went into the Crown Court offices once to ask if there was anything she could do to make sure she got called because she thought it unfair that some people missed out on the experience!

I did it a good few years ago and loved the experience. I often used to go and sit in Magistrates court during my studying. Later on I would also visit both Crown and Coroner’s courts as part of my HE studies.

I would have loved to have been called in my younger day.
My dad did jury service years ago, My daughter, probably in her early 20's. It was a sexual abuse case. It really affected her badly. So upset when she came home.

I did jury service at the Old Bailey when I was in my early 20s. It was drug smuggling with several defendants, so lasted around three months. Lots of jurors got excused as they could get two weeks off work but not time off for a long trial.
It was an interesting experience. The judge was out of touch with normal life. Due to the long case, we were given exemption for life from serving again.

It must be about 30 years since I was on a jury. It was a sexual abuse case with a girl accusing her mother's ex husband (not the girl's father) It seemed very dodgy all round, there didn't seem to have been any suggestion of abuse until the man had got engaged to another woman. The mother seemed very embittered and you couldn't help suspecting that she just wanted to ruin his new relationship. The girl seemed very hazy about what had happened and, in one case, wasn't even sure if anything had happened. The chairman of the jury was a devout Methodist and insisted on praying before we started deliberating. He was sure that God would tell him which way to vote, while another man wasn't sure if he had committed the assaults he was accused of but was certain he must have committed some crime, so he was going to say guilty. In the end we couldn't reach a verdict and it went for retrial. It seemed an appalling waste of money unless they could come up with some more compelling evidence.