Juries
Judge questions no-show jurors after deputies round them up; are junk mail, declining respect to blame?
A judge in Fort Valley, Georgia, recently questioned two dozen people who didn’t show up for jury duty to find out why. (Image from Shutterstock)
A judge in Fort Valley, Georgia, recently questioned two dozen people who didn’t show up for jury duty to find out why.
The no-shows had been rounded up by sheriff’s deputies to appear in Judge Connie L. Williford’s Peach County, Georgia, courtroom after only 84 people showed up among 200 who had been sent summonses for November jury duty.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution had the story on the early January court session.
“For about two hours,” the article reported, Williford “listened as excuses spilled forth.”
Some people said they ignored the summonses, the article reported. One factory worker said he didn’t get a summons but would have showed up if he had because “it’s a free day,” and he would still receive his pay. One man moved without changing his voter registration or driver’s license, both of which are sources of potential jurors. One woman said she is a stay-at-home mother who figured her responsibilities excused her from service. One man said the summons was in a stack of mail that he never looked at. A truck driver said he rarely checked his mail because he is often out of town.
“What we are finding,” Williford told one man, “is so much junk mail comes now and most people do their stuff electronically. They don’t pay as much attention to their mail as they used to. But until the legislature changes the way we have to summons folks, we summons them by mail.”
Williford ordered many of the people to appear for potential jury duty in mid-April.
The problem isn’t confined to Peach County, Georgia.
More than half of the 209 judges who responded to an informal poll by the National Judicial College in October 2023 said they had noticed that more people are avoiding jury duty, the article reports.
Some judges said contact information for potential jurors was out of date. But more cited a perceived lack of consequences for skipping jury duty, as well as declining respect for “the judiciary, the law, government, the responsibilities of citizenship or all of the above,” the National Judicial College said.
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