1. They normal per diem payment is very low, way below minimum wage. In my jurisdiction in California, there’s some way for low income people to request an extra payment if they had to miss work, but it’s still pretty low.

2. It’s pretty easy to temporarily get out of jury duty by claiming hardship (you have something else going on). They usually approve such requests and summon you again sometime later. IDK what happens if you keep repeating this.

3. In practice if you really don’t want to serve, you can answer the questions in a way that make you sound like a biased juror in either direction. I saw a guy do that, basically saying that cops lie all the time (he got dismissed).

4. Selection often takes longer than 1 day. Last time I got summoned I think I had to show up for 3 or maybe 4 days of preliminaries and jury selection. I got dismissed (thankfully) basically because I was very sleepy on the last day and (unintentionally, I was generally trying to play it straight) gave unfocused answers.

5. Your summons is a postcard with your juror number on it (8 digits iirc) and you’re supposed to bring it, but if you forget to bring the card, they can find the info for you.

6. In my jurisdiction the sequence is, a) you get the postcard saying you’re summoned for a certain week (monday thru friday). There’s a phone number you’re supposed to call sunday night, monday night, etc. You enter your juror number and the IVR either says “show up tomorrow” or “don’t show up tomorrow but call again tomorrow night” or (if it’s thursday night) “don’t show up tomorrow, thanks, bye” (in this case you’re off the hook for 1 year). b) In the event they say “show up tomorrow”, 100-200 people show up in a big room with free watery coffee. A few times during the day they will call 50 or so people from the room by juror number and tell them to go to courtroom 3 (or whatever). Anyone who doesn’t get sent to a courtroom gets sent home and is done for the year. I.e. you don’t have to show up to the big room multiple days. c) if you’re sent to a courtroom, you’re in jury selection, which can take multiple days. They select groups of potential jurors to ask questions (voir dire) while everyone else waits around. When they have enough jurors and alternates, anyone left gets sent home. Sometimes they run out of people to question and have to get more from the big room. d) if you’re actually seated on the jury, the trial can potentially go on for months, which sounds awful. Most are quicker than that though. Trials are usually 4 days a week, I think, and they can have breaks in the middle.

7. During jury selection and trials, there are multiple 15 minute bathroom breaks through the day. The bathrooms on the floor where the courtroom is get crowded during those breaks. The trick at my local courthouse is to use the stairwell to get to a different floor. The other floors’ bathrooms are usually not crowded.

8. You spend a lot of time in crowded rooms where the air quality is not that great. These days I seriously recommend wearing an N95 respirator the whole time, because of airborne pathogens. I wore one last time as did a few other people (most didn’t) and nobody bothered us about it.

I haven’t yet actually served on a jury but have been summoned multiple times. Usually you get dismissed without entering jury selection, sometimes without even having to show up, as described above. I’ve been in jury selection several times and only in voir dire once.

It depends on where you are. In my area, it is absolute torture, because they ask people the juror selection questions individually. One by one. Imagine a room of 150 people all sitting there as each person is called up and asked 10 questions privately. It took a whole day. The payout is $12 per day- lunch. Thankfully my employer paid me for the day.

You can imagine how, if a jury needs 10 people, when you call 150, if you have any excuse, you’ll get excused. In my area, juries are for people who want to be there.

So it is very dependent on your location with the exception of Federal jury duty which is pretty consistent. If you are out of state for school you can get an automatic exemption for that since I was selected in college once and didn’t need to show up.

I was called for county civil court a couple years ago. You get a letter with a phone number to call the night before to see if you need to show up. If you do then you park downtown/take the bus/etc and bring your letter (and usually a book or something else to do for the day). You sit in a large room with about 50-100 people where you get checked in by a clerk where you get a number (usually alphabetical by last name) . A judge comes in around 9am and tells everyone how important it is, thanks you for showing up and explains the process. We did have a handful of folks show up late due to issues with the light rail that morning which were allowed. The list of no shows was provided to the sheriff to issue fines after a certain point.

We then got a paper questionnaire to complete to help speed up voir dire and handed them in to the clerk, each had our juror selection number on it. Then you wait. The room had a small breakroom like area connected to it with tables, vending machines, and water fountains as well as restrooms for potential jurors to use throughout the day. We weren’t allowed to leave the room at all during this time.

After the attorneys finished reviewing papers we were called in groups of about 20 to walk to the courtroom for interviews. We were verbally asked at that point if there was a reason we could not serve for the case which was expected to take less than a week. Reasons were written down but no excuses were given at this point.

After the interview you went back and waited. At lunch you were permitted to leave for an hour and had to check in when you returned. Around 3pm they called numbers of who was selected and 2 alternates (I was the second alternate). Everyone else was dismissed and we were walked back to the courtroom to talk with the judge. He told us when to show up the following day and again thanked us for serving.

The pay for my state is only milage travelled and for the selection day and 3 days of trial was something like $25 total which didn’t even cover parking for me. It’s set by the state and there hasn’t been a push to update it. The judge did order lunch for all the jurors during the deliberation time (which was about an hour, I think so everyone could eat, I wasn’t in the deliberation room as an alternate but it was a really clear case).

We were told not to talk about the trial to anyone while it was ongoing. Even family or friends less it influence our judgement. Afterwards we were told it was up to us if we discussed it with anyone, we didn’t have to but were allowed. The attorneys both asked for some feedback on how they did which I provided to hopefully help them get better.

How can there be a punishment for not appearing?

Mail goes missing all the time, or is opened late, or the resident is travelling away from home.