Dear NYS - You S*ck!!

Dear NYS,

Don't you realize that I am getting married on October 11th and cannot be summoned as a Grand Juror on Sept 14th.
I dont have time to waste sitting around in Riverhead waiting to find out if i will have to serve. Especially when i can serve for 4 or more weeks, and oh yeah - I have a plane ticket to Hawaii on October 13th.

You do realize that your lil $40/day is not enough to pay for the balance of my wedding and my bills and my rent.

Could your timing be any worse?

Sincerely,

Megan

Oh no...what a load of crap. Hopefully you can get out of it.

GJ duty can be once or twice a week for 6 months, every day for 2 weeks, or lots of other options in between. In my experience, jurors with good excuses were able to get out of a certain number of days (bring your plane ticket stubs with you). If you can't defer, talk to the wardens and see if they'll show some compassion.

In general, it's really interesting to serve on a GJ, but given the circumstances, I do hope you can get out of it!!!

I had jury duty once and I couldn't start calling in the day they wanted me to so instead of deferring it I called them and asked what I could do. They told me that if I had the time I could just go in and serve (without my number being called). I did, sat on liweddings.com all day on the computer there, got dismissed around noon and went home. Loved it! So much better than going to work that day.

Grand Jury duty is different than regular jury duty. In Suffolk, they take 'volunteers' for Grand Jury duty. if they get enough people in the volunteers, then everyone else that doesn't volunteer gets deferred. they ask you when is good for you and you can (and i did) request to not be called for grand jury the next time. ask them for petit or trial jury duty and they will mark your summons. they will ask you when is good for you too. i got called again for exactly when i asked. the bad part is you have to go on the 14th but you will be out of there before lunch.

Trial jury is the one where you go in and say you can't be fair/impartial. grand jury is very very different. the selection is different and they do not ask the questions like they do. so you can't just go in and say i can't be fair and get out the same day and be done for 6 years. trust me.

i speak from experience (both working in the courts and being called) that if you dont want to have to worry, just go in the one day and defer. you can't get off the days you'll need for the grand jury. they need a certain number of people every day and come the end of the term, its much harder to get the days off. FM me if you have any questions.