How to Get Out of Jury Duty in Massachusetts: Be Unfair

I get this question a couple of times a year from family and friends. People don’t want to go to jury duty. They don’t want to waste their time.

As a trial lawyer, I rely on fair, smart, attentive jurors. But I totally understand why some people want to get out of it. Most often, you schedule a day off from work, and then call the hotline the day before, only to find out that it’s been cancelled. Sometimes, you have to go into the courthouse, where parking is usually lousy, and then you sit quietly for a few hours wondering what’s going on. You fill out a sheet of paper with a series of questions regarding your familiarity with the court system. Around 11:30, someone comes in and tells you how valuable your service has been, and thank you very much, but you won’t be needed for the day.

When that happens, you’ve been inconvenienced, but it’s not so bad.

Every now and then, though, instead of getting released, you get herded into the courtroom so they can pick a jury. What people really dread is the jury picking process. During this process, the judge asks a series of questions designed to figure out of you’ve got a bias against either party.

If you want to get out jury duty, this is where you’ll do it. Getting out of jury duty is really as simple as giving the judge an honest reason to believe that you can’t be fair. The reason has to be related to the type of case. So, if it’s a criminal case, you might admit that your favorite cousin is a cop, and so you’d trust police officers more than other people. Or, you might also admit that your cop cousin told you about all the corruption on the force, so you don’t trust police officers. Again – that would be a reason for the judge to relieve you from jury duty.

But before you go telling the judge you can’t be fair, let me tell you why I think working with a jury is a great experience.

When you’re on a jury, you get a front-row seat to an actual courtroom drama. Whenever there’s a trial, two parties are in an intense disagreement over some issue, and you get to be involved in resolving it. You get to decide whether someone committed a crime, breached a contract, or should be responsible for paying someone else’s medical bills. And while these may seem like simple issues, they never are.

You get to see how attorneys present the evidence – how they examine witnesses and call their credibility into question. It’s much more fascinating in real life than in any movie.

You get to hear a judge explain the law. Not the law as you think it probably should be, but as it actually is. It takes a long time, but it’s interesting, and it’s good to know. Then, you get to hear the lawyers for each side argue about how the evidence presented either does or doesn’t match up with that law. And you get to decide whether one of those lawyers is right, or whether they’re both wrong.

You also get to work with other jurors, and see how people other people make decisions. It’s amazing to talk with someone else who saw the same evidence you did, and find out they arrived at a completely opposite conclusion.

Most importantly, you get to be reminded that people bring some of their most difficult problems to court, and if you’re lucky enough to serve on a jury, you get to resolve those problems. The parties may not agree with your decisions (almost always, one party walks away unhappy), but at least they can start putting these disagreements behind them.

And if you really don’t want to be part of that, then go ahead and admit to the judge you just can’t be fair.

P.S. I got called for jury duty at Dedham District Court just before the pandemic. I was excited to see a trial that perspective. The judge ruled that I could be fair, and seated me as a juror… until the prosecutor used a peremptory challenge and I was excused.

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