Subject: Listen up, serfs: Jury duty dodgers skirt law’s long arm, go unpunished Sat Jun 20, 2015 3:58 am
PITTSBURGH (AP) - Owen Fazenbaker III’s decision to skip jury duty 11 times finally caught up with him in March when he appeared at the Somerset County Courthouse to challenge a child support ruling. A check of his record landed him before Judge D. Gregory Geary, who said it was “ironic” that Fazenbaker could find the courthouse in Somerset to lower his child support payments but couldn’t get there when sent 11 summonses to serve on a jury. When Fazenbaker, 32, of Stoystown could not come up with an acceptable excuse, Geary fined him $500. Fazenbaker paid the fine, records show. But the punishment handed Fazenbaker is rare. In a five-year period ending Dec, 31, 2014, four people in the state were punished for ignoring a jury duty summons, according to records the Tribune-Review obtained. In that period, which ended before Fazenbaker was fined, only one person in Adams County, two in Butler County and one in Lebanon County were cited for contempt of court for failing to appear for jury duty, records from the Administrative Office of Pennsylvania Courts show. The low numbers contrast sharply with the high numbers of Pennsylvanians who fail to respond when called for jury duty. More than 21 percent of the 1.3 million state residents who received jury summonses in 2013 ignored them, according to the state’s most recent records. Two recent cases show the extremes to which people will go to avoid serving on a jury. A North Hills pizza shop owner was jailed for 18 hours Monday when a judge said that “he was jerking us around” to get out of serving as a potential juror in a homicide trial. In Vermont, a man escaped jury duty by wearing a prisoner costume. “Jury duty is always something people don’t look forward to,” said Fayette County District Attorney Jack Heneks Jr. “Jurors don’t want to see their lives interrupted for two to three days.” Officials cannot pinpoint why some counties have high rates of scofflaws. The warnings of punishments of up to $500 in fines and 10 days in jail are prominently displayed on mailed jury summonses. The highs and lows Westmoreland County has one of the lowest rates of scofflaws in the state with only 1.4 percent of the 23,594 people called for jury duty failing to respond, records show.
Subject: Re: Listen up, serfs: Jury duty dodgers skirt law’s long arm, go unpunished Sat Jun 20, 2015 4:09 am
_________________ Anarcho-Capitalist, AnCaps Forum, Ancapolis,OZschwitz Contraband “The state calls its own violence law, but that of the individual, crime.”-- Max Stirner "Remember: Evil exists because good men don't kill the government officials committing it." -- Kurt Hofmann
Sponsored content
Subject: Re: Listen up, serfs: Jury duty dodgers skirt law’s long arm, go unpunished
Listen up, serfs: Jury duty dodgers skirt law’s long arm, go unpunished
Subject: Listen up, serfs: Jury duty dodgers skirt law’s long arm, go unpunished 
Sat Jun 20, 2015 3:58 am
