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Judge Reports to Jury Duty Like the Rest of Us

By Andrew Lu on October 09, 2012 | Last updated on March 21, 2019

A Pennsylvania judge served jury duty. If she didn't have good enough reason to skip out on jury duty, neither should you.

Cambria County Judge Linda Fleming received a jury duty notice just like everyone else. But given her job, no one would have blinked twice if Fleming opted out of her civic requirements.

However, the judge said that her job was no more important than anyone else's and showed up for jury duty. The judge even made it to a 36-member panel for jury selection in a criminal case before she was struck from the panel given her familiarity with the lawyers and investigators, reports The Tribune-Democrat.

In her courtroom, the judge says she doesn't let anyone out of jury duty. So she did what she asks others to do, reports The Tribune-Democrat.

Jury duty is generally a mandatory requirement that Americans have to go through. It's the price we pay to be tried by our peers, as opposed to having lofty sentences handed down from above (i.e.; a king). But in recent years, serving on a jury has come to be viewed as more of a nuisance and waste of time, instead of a privilege.

More and more people are looking for loopholes to get out of jury duty. And while some states may allow people out of jury duty for reasons like financial hardship, it's usually difficult to qualify for an exception.

We are all busy. It doesn't matter if you're a bus driver, lawyer, doctor, or blogger. We all think we're above jury duty, and that someone "less busy" should do the job. But if a county judge was willing to take time out of her busy schedule to serve as a juror, we should all remember that we're probably not too busy to serve either.

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