Jury service??

Been given noticefor this. Looking for some guidance/advice. Been told you don't get covered for your full pay. Honestly can't be arsed doing it in the first place anyway. So any help welcome.

How hard is it to claim for pay loss?
What happens if you don't bother calling to see if you're selected?

To be honest this civic duty stuff just roles me up. My only duty is to put my hard earned pay into my home and for my kids.

As I say any help/advice is appreciated

 

Your employer may give you special leave and pay you.

Any way you could get out of it? You are required to be there to care for someone or school pick ups?

 

Write to them basically telling them you’ve been waiting for this moment for years and can’t wait to to dish out some justice to the heathen sinners as * has personally commanded you.

 

You don't get covered even near minimum wage. That needs looking into. Just say you think you might know them. My mum got it a year before retirement and actually did know them but 3 or 4 others joined in

 

Send them a response saying you dont think you'll be able to hide your bias or you arent comfortable with the case or something along those lines, its how I got out of it first time.

 

Have you approached your employer to see if they can provide a letter a to exempt you?

 

I moaned about my citations in the ‘Trivial Things That Annoy You’ thread semi-recently, and I’ve been saving my Karen-esque, follow-up rant for the fiasco that it ended up being when I’m a bit more of a distant memory (proper paranoid stuff, I know )

Regarding the not responding to the citation:

The ‘threat’ is that if you fail to respond to the citation, they can potentially fine you £1000. For what it’s worth, I know some people claim that they’ve gotten away with outright ignoring the letters, as there’s no recorded delivery or anything, and you could ultimately just say that you never received them (should they find some way of getting a hold of you). I didn’t get my initial citation, but got a cheeky second letter, however there was no way of actually proving that I got any letter until I responded. I’ll admit that I’m a bit of a shitebag with stuff like this, and didn’t want to risk it, but it’s an option that’s seemingly worked for some people.

If you’re going to ignore the citation, ignore it, and everything related to it, completely and hope you’re not the extremely unlucky person they actually try and make an example out of. Don’t try and get excused and then just not turn up if they don’t accept it; they seem to go full Terminator in that scenario.

Should you respond, and assuming this is an option, try and get a written request for excusal from your boss/manager/whoever ASAP. It doesn’t need to be fancy, or War & Peace in length (although it might help), but it basically needs to state that they’ll be unable to properly function if you’re not there, or something to that effect, as that seems like the most tried and true method. Again, though:

1)The clerk and/or whoever ultimately rubber stamps the excusals are mercurial, and can be right * when they want to be; I’ve heard some outright shameful stuff in that regard.

2)They’ll likely come for you again after a short grace period, as they seem to view people getting excused as a personal insult. Once you’re in their sights, they’re like a dog with a bone.


If you do end up being called in, pray that you don’t actually have to sit on the jury or that there’s some reason why you can’t (i.e. it’s someone you know, it’s local to you etc.) and, if that fails, make yourself the worst juror possible. It doesn’t matter what the crime they’re being accused of is, you have some reason to be biased against them and would advocate for the death penalty if you could.

In terms of more practical help, I might still have the form they give you going over all the details about claiming expenses & covering loss of earnings, but I’d imagine most of that information is on the Scottish courts website.

 

Not yet. Pretty sure they would do that though

 

Could go down the school run for sure. Didn't think that would be good enough reason though

 

If you need to do the school run because your partner is not able, for example it's a drive and they can't do it should be fine. If kids are secondary school I don't think you'd get away with it.

 

Turn up looking like a tramp, stinking of booze and stale pish, whilst feeding your imaginary dog.

 

Apologies for jumping in here again, especially when I’m not the person you were quoting.

You might get extremely lucky, and get the nicest person ever casting judgement over your excusal, but I’d say in all likelihood you’d be told to just drop off your kids a little earlier than usual and that they’re willing to accept you being a little bit late.

I don’t know where you’re based, and if that even leads to any differences anyway, but anytime I’ve been called in, it’s always been for 9:45am. In the most recent instance, they didn’t even take the attendance until a little after 10am. They get a little angsty if you’re not there at that initial call, but they’re generally willing to wait you out - you’ll likely just get some dirty looks and a bit of a scolding when you do arrive.

I mentioned it the previous post but, based on some of the stories I know about personally, some of the folks involved in the excusal process can be proper callous *. You’re more likely to get an excusal based on somewhat nebulous work commitments, than for one based on legitimate personal reasons.

 

Jury duty scarred you, didn't it?

 

Is it that obvious?

And to think, this is what I’m like without having actually sat through a trial!

 

Check your contact.
By law they must let you go but you may get full pay.
Here is the link
https://www.scotcourts.gov.uk/coming-to-court/jurors/juror-expenses/

 

Just get it done,be a good citizen and all that and send the * or * down.

 

I managed to get exempted from it years ago. I wrote them a nice letter explaining that I worked in the kind of environment where there was a likelihood my own face would be recognizable by some of the folk standing in the dock I had worked there for years, had already been subjected to threatening behaviour, and I didn't fancy being further targeted in my workplace. They wrote a nice letter back saying I wouldn't be called again and that was the last I heard from them.

 

Done it twice. Once in Scotland and once in England.
Both found guilty and both got 6 years.
Scot’s one was pedo case and in England was rape case.

 

A jury needs good people on the jury..

Tbf, how nervous would you be if innocent and you were reliant on the intelligence of the jury to do the right thing.. and they aren't even intelligent enough to get out of jury duty in the first place..

 

Have you had to do it?