Unfiltered Story #343210

Around the middle to end of April, I received a jury summons for May 22nd. My first jury summons ever. I really didn’t want to go, but I didn’t qualify for anything on the dismissal request form. So I let my job know and made plans to miss work for however long it took.

The day before Mother’s Day, my younger sister calls my mom in a rage. She had gone to pick up child support from her ex-husband and, in addition to the money, found her own jury summons for the exact same day I had mine. She was angry at him for not telling her it was there. The envelope had Superior Court on it, so it was obviously important and he had to have had it for a couple of weeks by then. He just said he ‘didn’t know’ why he hadn’t let her know it was there.

She was also upset about the timing: she was starting a new job the day after Mother’s Day. Now she was going to have to let them know that she would have to miss the start of her second week there. She might have been able to be dismissed if she sent in the request form, but it was unfortunately too late to send it in.

On Mother’s Day, we both attended church with our mom. After the service, my sister was complaining to one of our cousin’s about having jury duty and only finding out the day before. He looks a little surprised and asks if it’s on May 22nd. Apparently he has jury duty that day, too. We start joking about how many more family members were going to be there.

May 22nd arrives, and we sit together while waiting for it to start. We recognized a couple of faces, but no relatives. Eventually, they start calling roll. There ends up being around 300 names called because there were multiple cases. The three of us were in the first 100. Then, near the very end of the roll, we heard it: another cousin’s name. We start laughing quietly about it. He didn’t answer when called, so he didn’t even show up.

So, out of 300 people summoned for jury duty in our county, four of them were related. Closely related. The no-show cousin’s dad was my mom’s brother while the other cousin’s maternal grandmother was my maternal grandfather’s sister. Four immediate cousins, two of which were sisters. And none of us share a last name.

In the end, all but one case ended up pleading out and since were weren’t picked for that case, none of us ended up actually serving on a jury. There was, however, a very good chance that my sister and I could have been picked for the same jury: we were only one number apart on the roll.