Jury duty

[rslade]

I'm off the hook for jury duty, so my presentation joke remains intact.

The jury or trial was cancelled, almost literally at the last minute.  Selection was to start on Monday, and I got a call yesterday (Friday) late in the afternoon.  (I almost didn't answer it, since it was on my cell, which I vaguely recall them asking for when I registered my confirmation.  Almost nobody knows my cell, so I generally know who is calling, and I didn't recognize the number.)  After the call I realized that the person who claimed to be from the sheriff's office had given me almost no checkable information.  (I did later find find an email notifying me of the cancellation, so that was something.)

But it did put me in mind of a possible form of jury tampering.  Anyone can call and claim to be from the sheriff's office.  (In Canada sheriffs handle court security, and some other forms of court administration, such as jury pool management.)  And, if there is no way for the juror to confirm, then it would be easy enough to get rid of jurors you don't want.  Just have them not show up.

Of course, this risk is slight.  To gain access to information about the jury pool you would have to suborn a member of the sheriff's office and, if you could do that, there would be a number of other ways to tamper with the jury.

Just an idle security maven thought ...

[dcontesti]

HMMMMM isn't there a penalty for not showing up?

Like having the Sheriff show up at your door with the RCMP??????

I just finished my stint of Jury Duty.....and hope that I don't get called again......this was the third time.