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Commentary by Wallace Hoggatt
Special to the Herald/Review
Believe it or not, there are citizens who welcome the opportunity to serve on juries who are happy to receive the jury commissioner’s notice and questionnaire telling them they have been drawn for jury service during a given six-month period, who gladly fill out the questionnaire and send it back by the deadline, and who later check the Superior Court Clerk’s Web site in the hopes the trial they’ve been summoned for hasn’t been canceled.
I know that such civic-minded citizens exist. I’ve met a few of them. If you are part of this group, please accept my thanks for your willingness to serve.
But I am well aware that not everyone who receives a jury summons is overjoyed at the prospect of spending several days at a stretch as a trial juror or appearing every Thursday for four months as a grand juror. It isn’t always or even often the case that unhappily summoned jurors are unpatriotic or lack civic spirit. It’s just that so many people have so many other things to do with their time rather than serve on juries, things such as working or going to school or taking care of grandchildren.
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As important as working, going to school and taking care of grandchildren are, in and of themselves they don’t take priority over jury service. The law recognizes a difference between an inconvenience — which will not result in an excuse from jury service — and a substantial hardship — which will. Will serving as a juror for the next three days cause you to reschedule a meeting or two? Sorry, but that isn’t a reason to excuse you. Do you have surgery set to begin tomorrow morning? Thanks for coming in today, good luck with your operation, and you’re excused.
Contrary to what you may have heard, very few professions receive a get-out-of-jury-service-free card. Law enforcement officers are among the few, but they have to request to be excused and not all do. I once had the sheriff of this county sitting in my courtroom for several hours during jury selection. Just about everyone else has to report for jury duty when summoned. Teachers have to appear, and so do physicians, dentists, accountants and lawyers.
Twenty years ago, when I was practicing law, I was summoned to appear for jury service three Tuesdays in a row. I went each time, but never made the random selection to get on any of the jury panels.
Judges don’t get a free pass, either.
Last year a limited jurisdiction judge from the northern end of the county sat for the better part of a day in my courtroom, waiting, in vain, to be called at random to join the jury panel. I have myself been summoned several times for jury service while I’ve been a judge. I was once summoned to show up in my own courtroom for a trial I presided over. I had to excuse myself from jury service in that case. Can you imagine how hard it would have been to conduct a bench conference?
More recently I was summoned for jury service in the courtroom of a colleague of mine. I was prepared to go, but the case settled the day before trial, and so none of the prospective jurors had to show up.
Most of those who are unhappy to be called for jury duty are nonetheless willing to serve. They may be reluctant, but they will do their part. In fact, if they are actually selected to serve on a jury, they frequently consider themselves lucky to have been chosen. I’ve run into former jurors, sometimes years after their service, who have told me how glad they were to have been selected. By contrast, I can’t recall hearing from people claiming to be happy because they were excused from the jury panel to go back to work.
It is true there are a few people who would do just about anything to get out of jury duty. You should see some of the things people write in an effort to get out of serving on juries, but then again, maybe you shouldn’t. Some of these statements can be truly disheartening. I don’t know if these folks really believe such stuff, or if they think by saying absurd things they’ll get an immediate excuse from jury service.
Still, the bizarre statements of a tiny segment of our community cannot, for long, dampen my faith in our jury system. I first saw a jury trial 34 years ago when I was a young college student. The case was complex and the jurors’ task difficult, and I was impressed by the jurors’ diligence as reflected in their demeanor during the trial and by the verdict they eventually reached. I acknowledge that, in the more than three decades since then, I have once in a great while been surprised by a verdict in a particular case — and not necessarily in this county, or this state. These are, however, only rare exceptions, and my belief in the fundamental soundness of the jury system has only become stronger over time.
The jury system is part of the birthright of all Americans. The right to trial by jury was brought to this continent by English colonists, but the British government found that, once extended, the right couldn’t easily be taken back, a lesson the Crown learned to its great sorrow. One of the many reasons cited in the Declaration of Independence for dissolving the colonies’ political bands with Great Britain was that the king had “depriv[ed] us in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury.”
Because the right to a jury trial has such importance, it is necessary that citizens be called upon to serve as jurors. The state Legislature has declared that “[i]t is the policy of this state that all qualified citizens have an obligation to serve on juries when summoned by the courts of this state, unless excused.” If you have already served as a juror, please accept my thanks for your service. If you haven’t yet had the chance, perhaps I’ll have the opportunity to thank you later.
WALLACE R. HOGGATT has been a judge of the Superior Court of Arizona since 1996. He currently serves as presiding judge for Cochise County. Look for the Inside the Courts column the last Sunday of each month.
Reggie Brannon wrote on Feb 26, 2008 2:57 AM: