Here’s What Happens When You Don’t Get Excused From Jury Duty

The Numbers

At the end of December 2024 I received a Jury Duty summons in the mail. It’s not the first one in my lifetime – I’ve received them before. It was from Superior Court in Los Angeles County where I live.

Years ago, when I received my first one, they used the voter registration lists to pick potential jurors. Several people I knew wouldn’t register to vote for this reason; They didn’t want to be called.

But a while back they added names from the driver license rolls in California, as well. So, this put a crimp in the plans for these folks who didn’t want to be summoned. Different states and different counties may have other methods, but they might be similar. Keep this in mind, since I’ll be writing about my experiences in LA County.

In LA County over 2 million individuals will get a jury duty summons each year. Other California counties may send out fewer as they don’t have as many cases as LA County – they need fewer prospective jurors. Only about 10% -20% will actually be chosen to be on a jury. You’ll be on call for 5 days. If you show up as required you will be assigned to one jury only as it it supposed to be one day one trial. There are people who call the night before for 5 days and never have to show up. Others show up one of the 5 days and get excused that day. It depends on the court’s needs.

Most people search the internet to see how to get out of jury duty. This post gives you an idea of what happens if you don’t get excused. Every trial is different so your experience would not be identical, but it might bear some resemblance. Numbers and dates may be changed. The privacy of all individuals involved, even those that are on the public record or may have been found guilty, is to be preserved.

How it Began

My summons had me starting the week of January 13th, 2025 at the Michael Antonovich Antelope Valley Courthouse in Lancaster, CA. You can click here to see Google’s view of the courthouse. This is about 9 miles from my home in Palmdale. The courthouse was built on what basically is the border of Lancaster and Palmdale. The attempt is supposed to keep your service within 25 miles of home. Now there was a sentence printed on the summons that mentioned that those of us over 70 years old could be excused and a doctors letter wasn’t needed. But I wasn’t sure what kind of
can of worms this would open if I tried to exercise this excuse. Besides, I wanted to see what would happen if I went with the flow of things. This blog is about common experiences in life that we might share. Many times I express an experience through one of my posters. But that’s not the only way. I registered for jury service as per the summons instructions; service was to begin Monday, January 13th.

So, I called the number on the summons the day before, Sunday, and the recorded message said I didn’t have to show up on the Monday. Great! This happened to me years ago – I called for 5 days and never had to show up. Jury duty was finished! But when I called Monday night for Tuesday, the message was different. It even had information in it to remind jurors about not showing up if you have covid symptoms. Then it said to report to the Jury Assembly room at 8: 14 the next morning.

Reporting for Service

On the cold and windy morning of Tuesday the 14th I entered the courthouse and emptied my pockets at the metal detectors. I was glad to be wearing my no metal belt with the plastic belt buckle. In the past I’ve had to remove my belt to get through — a big annoyance. I headed down the hall to the line of people entering the jury assembly room and according to instructions, removed the top portion of my summons that contained the printed Juror Badge. We were later given a clear plastic holder with clip to insert the badge.

By the time everyone checked in there was probably several hundred people in the assembly room. We all watched a short video about jury duty. Then a roll call was taken and we were broken up into groups. My group was about 50 or sixty people.

The assembly room worker told us, “Since the pandemic, we try to get everyone assigned to a courtroom by 10:00 AM.”By 10:30 my group was standing in front of our courtroom and we were assigned Juror numbers from 1 to 64, basically at random. A court employee called out the last four digits of the JID number printed on your badge and you went and got a juror number. The courtroom was on the 4th floor of the 4 floor building and was the only floor with security people at a desk as you leave the elevator. Apparently this floor is where they conduct criminal trials. and they feel extra security is necessary.

After assigning juror numbers and showing us how to line up to enter the courtroom, we were told to take a lunch break and come back at 1:30 PM – 3 hours later. What a waste of time; can’t do anything for three hours. But why not. The county wastes our money with some of their projects; why shouldn’t they be able to waste our time also.

Entering The Courtroom

At 1:30 over 60 prospective jurors lined up in the hall just outside the courtroom. We were marched inside and sat according to our badge number order. The judge introduced the attorneys involved and the rest of her staff. The attorneys then started explaining different legal terms that would come up in the case.

Voir Dire

The process of Voir Dire was finally started. This is the process of answering questions from the judge and attorneys to help them decide who they want on the jury. There were two defendants and each had his own attorney. And of course there was the prosecuting attorney representing the district attorney’s office.

We were then asked about the question sheet we were given earlier. The judge addressed us individually by juror number and wanted to know the questions we noted as being answered with a yes. From these questions she and the attorneys were to determine which of us could be objective in our dealings with the matters of the case. There were 64 prospective jurors in the room and by asking us questions, the court would have to narrow it down to 12 jurors and two alternatives. Everyone else would be excused. Most in the room would not be part of the
trial once it started
.

When the judge was finished, the attorneys took turns asking the jurors questions individually by juror number. There were some who came out and said they couldn’t be objective – obviously trying to get excused. 2 jurors were let go shortly after – one who worked where the alleged crimes were committed and one who was indirectly affected by the wildfires that were burning that week in Southern California.

By 4:30 we were excused for the day to return the next day (Wednesday) at 1:30 PM. The attorneys picked up where they left off questioning some of the jurors who hadn’t been called on the day before. The judge announced that the case would last about 4 days and at the end of Wednesday, it didn’t seem like it was any closer to starting. We were told that the court wouldn’t convene on Thursday and Friday that week. And the following Monday was a holiday – Martin Luther
King Jr holiday. Therefore, we all had to wait until Tuesday to see who would be let go.

Tuesday And Peremtory Excuses.

The process by which attorneys in court excuse jurors without explanation is called a peremptory challenge, and it allows lawyers to dismiss a potential juror without stating a reason, within a limited number of allotted challenges per side.

At 1:30 on Tuesday the judge started asking attorneys who they didn’t want on the jury. They took turns in rotation dismissing some of the 60 or so left. When they reached their allotted limit, the judged asked the 12 remaining jurors with the lowest juror number to stand. I was one of them. Her assistant swore us in as jurors. New juror numbers were assigned from 1 through 12.Then a second smaller group was chosen to pick two alternatives from. They were picked by the judge and everyone else in the room was excused. Their jury service was finished on the one day or one trial system the court uses. But, of course, by then they had shown up for three days Tuesday and Wednesday of one week and Tuesday of a second week.

It was 3:00 PM and time for a 20 minute break.

Now that the jury was chosen, when we remaining 14 returned from the break, the trial immediately began. The prosecuting attorney began his opening statement and started giving details of the case. His job was to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the defendants were guilty of the crimes they were charged with. The attorneys for the defendants didn’t have to prove anything if the prosecutor failed to do this.

While the prosecuting attorney was speaking, the judge noticed something was wrong with juror number 6 and thought she might be ill. Shortly afterwards she was dismissed and one of the alternates took over.

he prosecutor then continued and he had various videos of the crime from several angles and witnesses from several stages of the crime that would testify. We watched the videos many times as the witnesses testified during the Wednesday session the next day.

The defense cross-examined the witnesses but called none of their own – not even the victim.

For whatever reason, calls went out early Thursday morning telling us not to show up as the afternoon session was canceled. We were told that we would still get credit for the day. Credit meant getting paid the $15 per day, considerably less than minimum wage and the reason most people would rather work their regular job if their employer doesn’t pay for jury duty. But you have to also consider that most days of the trial were only 3 hours or less and mornings were free to do what you wanted.

Deliberations Begin

The attorneys presented their closing arguments. First the prosecutor then the defense. Then the prosecuting attorney had a chance for rebuttal. Finally the judge read instructions for the jury. By about 3:30 we were led into the deliberation room by the bailiff. First course of action was to choose a foreman, which in this case turned out to be a forewoman, juror number 8.

It was Friday afternoon around 4:00 PM and our jury was prepared to continue and finish the trial, but the judge instructed the bailiff to tell us to go home and be back Monday at 10:30 AM.

Final Day

We, the jury, were sitting on the benches outside the courtroom at 10:30 AM on Monday, January 27^th, when the bailiff comes into the hallway to do a roll call.

Juror number 7 does not answer, “Here!” as everyone else does. Now to be fair, a lot of individuals were running late that day because snow fell in Palmdale the night before. The court tried calling her, but there was no answer. We had one alternate left to deliberate with, however, I was guessing that the alternate couldn’t just join us. We’d have to convene the court to get it on the court record, and that probably wouldn’t happen until 1:30 PM.

After waiting in the hallway until about noon, the bailiff told us to get lunch and be back at 1:30.

At 1:30 we were all gathered outside the courtroom again and ready to go to the deliberation room – and so was Juror number 7. The bailiff led us to the deliberation room.

We sat down and started discussing the case – the first time we were able to do so among ourselves. We’ve been instructed by the judge not to discuss the case with each other or with our families.

A computer and flash drives were brought in if we wanted to review the videos that we watched over and over during the case. After discussing several points, we took a vote and decided the defendants were guilty on all accounts.

The foreman had to fill out a form for each verdict. By 2:20 PM we were done and pressed a button in the room to summon the bailiff. He led us back into the courtroom where the verdicts were read.

Finally, the judge thanked us for performing our service and excused us to go back to the jury assembly room to check out. There we received a certificate if we needed to get excused from jury service if called again within a year – it also was to be used if someone needed it to show their employer.

It was not my goal here to present a case and all its details. You can see this on TV court shows. But rather I wanted to speak about some of the common experiences to be had if you show up for jury service in a Los Angeles County Superior Court. Since no two trials are the same, your experience will be somewhat different.

Share your experience in a comment below. What was your jury duty like?

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