My famous jury duty story

It may not be "world famous" like KROQ, but I have a pretty damned cool story to tell about my one of my really slick ways of avoiding jury duty.

I have avoided jury duty on numerous occasions, using multiple methods. My luck had finally run out, as I was to actually show up for the first time tomorrow. However, I am getting at least a one-day reprieve, as my group doesn't have to show up to the courthouse tomorrow. I have my fingers crossed that this luck continues for the rest of the week.

My most recent avoidings of jury duty were a few years ago and went along the following lines: I received a summons for a California court while I was in grad school at Cornell, so I informed them that I live in New York. While in grad school, I also received a summons from a court in Ithaca, so I got out of that by informing them of my voting status in California.

My best story, however, culminated in the summer between my junior and senior years (summer 1996). I had been summoned to one court in Beverly Hills. I tried unsuccessfully to get out of it because of my student status, but I delayed it for the then-maximum 6 months at one time. (If I recall correctly, one was allowed two separate six-month delays at the time.) I was supposed to be taken out of the pool for new summons, but I nevertheless received a summons during this waiting period to appear in another of the Beverly Hills courts. I attempted to get out of this using the reason that I was already summoned elsewhere so that I wasn't supposed to be in the candidate pool, etc. They did not accept this reasoning, which wa clearly valid, and scheduled my appearance for jury duty in that other court.

This, of course, meant war. Yesterday, I read an essay by Harlan Ellison about revenge, and my actions in this particular case fit pretty well within Ellison's discussion. I delayed both of my court appearance dates, which I remind you were in two different courts, to the same day. You might remember that back in 1996, there was some delay as databases got updated, so the solution was simple: I called the first courthouse and informed them of the clerical error that had me showing up to both courts on the same day, which clearly I couldn't do. The guy I talked to checked their database and saw that it was true, so he removed my scheduled appearance at the first courthouse. Then, before the database could be updated, I immediately called the second courthouse and used the same procedure to remove my appearance there. Slam dunk! Of course, this wouldn't work nowadays because the database would have contained the updated information immediately, but the solution was the simple but elegant one for the technology of the day.

Take that, U.S. government bureaucracy!