What happens if you don't show up for jury duty or you forget to show up? Chronic no-show jurors
are in contempt of courtYou should call the jury pool number listed on your summons as soon as possible to get a new date, said Nathan Kim, chief courts administrator for the state Judiciary. You then will be issued another jury summons and given a new date.
Off the bat, you probably won't be penalized, Kim said, unless you are a chronic no-show.
The Legislature has authorized the Judiciary to carry someone's name over to the next year if he or she doesn't report in the year they are called.
Kim said a summons is an order, not a request.
"So when they fail to report, they are basically disregarding a court's order" and no-shows eventually could be found in contempt of court, he said.
Kim acknowledged that no-shows are "a problem that we're very concerned about." No one has been penalized so far, but the Judiciary is looking at ways of more forcefully enforcing the summons.
About 40,000 people are summoned, on average, to serve in state courts every year. Close to 26,000 of them are then told to report. In fiscal year 1996-97, 22,000 actually reported for service, Kim said, with 6,000 eventually serving as jurors.
During that period, roughly 4,100 people did not show up.
"That's a significant number," Kim said.
That compares with 2,900 no-shows of 16,000 people who reported for jury duty in 1995-96.
The state courts' no-show rate has averaged around 15 percent to 16 percent a year, Kim said.
At U.S. District Court, if someone does not respond to the first call to jury duty, a second notice is sent. "If they don't report in for that second notice, we will issue an order to show cause to bring them in before the judge," said jury administrator Cynthia Aranador.
If the judge finds the excuse is lacking, the no-show could either be fined or imprisoned.
In most cases, the court is willing to give people the benefit of the doubt, Aranador said. However, she recalls that one grand juror, who kept missing sessions, was ultimately fined $5 for every session missed, amounting to more than $200.
For federal criminal cases, the rate of no-shows is about 10 percent to 15 percent, Aranador said.
But, "fortunately," Kim said, "the clear majority of citizens do report and the Judiciary is very thankful that they fulfill their sense of duty."
I want to have a birthday greeting sent to my mother from the president. Do you have a number I can call to have that done? We called U.S. Sen. Daniel K. Inouye's office and a staffer there said to call his Hawaii office, 541-2542.
They will get the pertinent information, then submit it to the White House Greetings Office, which "will send a card directly from D.C." for free, she said.
However, the recipient has to be quite elderly, with the categories given as 80-99 years, 100, or 101 and older.
In addition to birthday greetings, the White House will send wedding anniversary salutations, but again, the recipients have to be celebrating at least 50-69 years of wedded bliss, or "70 and subsequent years."
About 2:45 p.m. Sunday, Aug. 3, I was exiting the Sam's Club lower-level parking lot, using the exit where three lanes merge to one. A man in a red compact car was also trying to exit, refusing to let me merge alternately, as is customary, and motioning for me to get back in my lane. I don't know if he thought I was trying to beat everybody else, but if I had my husband with me, I doubt he would have acted that stupidly. I hope he changes his ways. -- J.C. Auwe
