Jury Duty Makes Some Students ‘Angry Men’

When Florida native Matthew S. Winston ’07 received a summons to serve on a Massachusetts jury this past summer, he found the proposition “a little ridiculous.”

Since Massachusetts juries are chosen from a list of people who are 17 years or older and living in the commonwealth, even students whose permanent residence is in another state may be required to serve, according to the website for the Massachusetts Office of Jury Commissioner.

Winston said he was asked to report at 8 a.m. to the courthouse in Ayer, Mass.—which is more than 30 miles from Harvard Yard. But he said the cab he wound up taking that morning broke down en route, forcing him to wait several hours for a tow truck to arrive and take him back to Boston.

Winston says that he finds the system “ridiculous” because he thinks that students who are summoned for jury duty are often not selected to serve in the actual trial.

But Visiting Professor of Law Shari S. Diamond says that students are just as likely to be chosen as anybody else.

“The rap is that [students] are not going to be selected because you are too bright, and people are going to be afraid of you,” Diamond says. But she said that the state’s courts “have now eliminated practically all the occupation exemptions that used to be in place, and now we regularly see lawyers, engineers, and nurses on juries, so I don’t see any reason why [a student] couldn’t be chosen.”

A CIVICS LESSON

Techrosette Leng ’07 says she was selected and served in Cambridge last April on a four-day trial that resulted in the defendant’s conviction for sexual assault and battery.

Leng says she missed all of her classes on the first day of the trial, but subsequent days were shortened to alleviate the burden on serving jurors.

She says she thought jury duty was a great experience.

“I am a government concentrator and I thought it was really cool to see lawyers at work,” she says.

Leng adds that she had few reservations about serving because she is a Massachusetts native, but does question the state’s overall policy on juror selection.

“I am surprised all these non-local students are being called in, and, honestly, if I were them, I would be just as upset as they are,” she says. “I don’t think Massachusetts should put those claims on students.”

A MATTER OF JUSTICE?

Yiyang “Yaya” Wu ’07 was summoned for jury duty in the summer of 2004. She says she waited four hours at the courthouse and was sent home without getting an interview. Since then, she has also been summoned for jury duty in her home state of Maryland.

“I honestly don’t think it’s fair,” she says. “I can’t vote in two states, so I don’t think I should have to serve jury duty in two states.”

Despite her frustrations, Wu agrees that college students should have the responsibility of serving on juries.

“I was kind of excited to be called,” she says. “I think it does make sense that all people should be summoned to jury duty, because you want to represent all spheres of people who live in Massachusetts, and college students are a huge part of the people who live in Massachusetts.”

Wu can be summoned in both Maryland and Massachusetts because both states have expanded their sources for names of potential jurors beyond voter registration lists, says Harvard Law School’s Diamond.

A DRIVING FACTOR

According to Diamond, states have recognized that voter registration lists are often not representative of states’ socioeconomic and age demographic breakdowns.

For example, using driver’s license lists to expand jury pools “increases the likelihood that young people will be called for jury duty,” Diamond says. “Unfortunately, young people are less likely to register to vote, but they are very likely to have driver’s licenses.”

The Office of Jury Commissioner says on its website that it understands that “many people consider jury duty an inconvenience, an intrusion, and a hardship” and has implemented measures intended to lessen the hassle of jury duty.

Massachusetts, for example, uses the “one day, one trial” system, whereby jurors serve either one day or, if selected to serve on a jury, one trial.

After jurors have fulfilled this requirement, they are disqualified from serving again for three years. And although students, along with other unemployed residents, are not paid for their first three days of jury duty, they can be reimbursed for out-of-pocket expenses.

Since jury data is taken from census data, the state has no reliable way to track how many jurors are students, says Massachusetts Jury Commissioner Pamela J. Wood. She adds that there is also no central repository with information about the ages of jurors.

So without the data unavailable, are students disproportionately burdened by Massachusetts’ trial panel policies?

The jury’s still out.