Jury duty and felonies
Jan. 28th, 2008 12:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bktheirregularSaturday, I got a jury questionnaire from the State of New York. Given that I'm supposed to be receiving paperwork for a foreign work visa any day now, and I'm trying to gear up to head back to Athens, one might see a bit of a problem.
Still, I figured I should be honest. Which wasn't a problem until I hit the last question: have you served on a jury in the last four years?
Reviewing my LJ (hey, it's finally good for something!), I found an entry on January 4, 2006, talking about getting picked for a jury, as Juror Number Six. But that was in New Jersey, not New York, so I wasn't sure if it counted, and anyway, I'd managed to lose the letter confirming this sometime during the move to the City.
I called the number on the questionnaire, and was fed into an automated voice-mail-type questionnaire. They reached the question of having previously served on a jury, and the only answers they'd accept were "yes" or "no", with no provision for nuances. I answered "yes", because yeah, it was the truth, but I wasn't sure if they considered one day on a jury in New Jersey to count for their purposes.
At the end of that call, I got the statement that any lies that I'd told would be considered a felony. You can imagine how thrilled that left me. And when I looked up the New York County jury management help number, and got fed into another automated voice-mail-like information system, and got told that if I'd served one day on a jury, after September 2004, it didn't count ...
*headdesk*
(I called once more, and after about ten minutes, got an actual live person who said I shouldn't worry about going to prison over it, just get a copy of my papers in case there were any questions. But then the lady in the Bergen County court system said that New York wouldn't accept a letter from New Jersey. But she's sending me a copy of the letter anyway.)
(And when the lady in the New York office talked about "Jersey", I couldn't understand - it sounded like "Jur-see", and I was so wooly-headed I couldn't make the connection.)
Still, I figured I should be honest. Which wasn't a problem until I hit the last question: have you served on a jury in the last four years?
Reviewing my LJ (hey, it's finally good for something!), I found an entry on January 4, 2006, talking about getting picked for a jury, as Juror Number Six. But that was in New Jersey, not New York, so I wasn't sure if it counted, and anyway, I'd managed to lose the letter confirming this sometime during the move to the City.
I called the number on the questionnaire, and was fed into an automated voice-mail-type questionnaire. They reached the question of having previously served on a jury, and the only answers they'd accept were "yes" or "no", with no provision for nuances. I answered "yes", because yeah, it was the truth, but I wasn't sure if they considered one day on a jury in New Jersey to count for their purposes.
At the end of that call, I got the statement that any lies that I'd told would be considered a felony. You can imagine how thrilled that left me. And when I looked up the New York County jury management help number, and got fed into another automated voice-mail-like information system, and got told that if I'd served one day on a jury, after September 2004, it didn't count ...
*headdesk*
(I called once more, and after about ten minutes, got an actual live person who said I shouldn't worry about going to prison over it, just get a copy of my papers in case there were any questions. But then the lady in the Bergen County court system said that New York wouldn't accept a letter from New Jersey. But she's sending me a copy of the letter anyway.)
(And when the lady in the New York office talked about "Jersey", I couldn't understand - it sounded like "Jur-see", and I was so wooly-headed I couldn't make the connection.)
