Only the first three "reasons" are dumb. The rest are more or less valid reasons to want to avoid jury duty in a criminal trial.

1. You can be fired. 
   • False: You are protected by law from being fired for taking time off work to respond to a jury summons and to serve on a jury. Your employer need not pay you for your time off work, though. If your employer does pay you, the company can require you to refund them your jury pay.                  
2. Life is too short to waste your time this way.
   • The jury system is fundamental to freedom. Believe me, once you see how judges behave in court, you won't want to contemplate what happens in systems where there are no juries. In France, for example, the judges are not only the juries, they're even the investigators and prosecutors.
3. There are criminals in courthouses, as well as lawyers and people with guns.
   • True, but there are criminals, lawyers, and gun-toters on the streets, too.
4. The defendant's gang will know who you are, where you live, and who lives with you. They may seek revenge.
   • True. Jurors' identities are not secret. Jurors' personal information is revealed in open court, in most cases, and is definitely always revealed to the defense.
5. The defense attorney can run credit and background checks on you: these checks can include your medical and mental-health history and contacting your employer, friends, neighbors, and relatives.
   • True. This is expensive, though, and generally only occurs in high-profile cases.
6. You will have to swear an oath that may violate your freedom of speech, thought, and religion or lack thereof.
   • True. There is no standard juror's oath. When I was sworn in as a juror, I swore "under the eyes of the ever-living God." I have no idea what that means. No one else on the jury had ever heard such an oath before either, including a priest.
7. You'll be expected to police your fellow jurors and rat on them if they violate the rules.
   • True. The bailiff is not permitted to listen to jury conversations or deliberations. The only people who know what goes on among jurors is the jurors themselves. You will be instructed to report all violations of the rules to the judge. This can lead to a lack of trust among jurors.
8. You'll be subject to peer pressure during deliberations that make high school look like a mature, rational institution of colleagues.
   • True. What more can I say? You can be brought to tears.
9. You could end up being charged with the crime of perjury.
   • True. You swear to tell the truth on the written questionnaire and during voir dire.
10. You could end up being held in contempt of court for voting your conscience.
    • True. In at least one case, the judge held the lone holdout on a jury in contempt of court. Read an article about this: click here.
11. You could end up being charged with accepting a bribe for your vote.
    • True. A defendant found guilty has a motive for digging up dirt on the jury that condemned him.
12. You could end up being charged with threatening or bribing a fellow juror.
    • True.
13. You could end up being publicly charged with juror misconduct, such as conducting your own investigation, and dismissed from the jury.
    • True. As far as I know, this is treated as mere stupidity, not a crime.
14. You could be publicly humiliated in the media during or after the trial, such as being labeled "fat" or a "cupcake."
    • True. If you can't stand the heat, ...
15. The judge can negate your hard-fought decision by overruling the verdict or declaring a mistrial.
    • True. The only verdict a judge cannot overturn or reduce is "not guilty."
16. You may have second thoughts about your decision after the trial, but there's nothing you can do to change it.
    • True, if you wait too long. Because of peer pressure, jurors do occasionally vote one way, only to later wish they had voted the other. A famous example of this is Michael Jackson's verdict of "not guilty" of child-molestation. However, when the judge polls the jury at the end of the trial, you can change your mind. The judge will have to declare a mistrial.
17. If you oppose the death penalty, you'll be caught on the horns of a dilemma: You'll have to admit it, thus ensuring that the defendant is going to be tried by a "death-qualified jury." If you lie in voir dire and say you could consider capital punishment, and then in the end you vote against the death penalty, you will have done something highly unethical.
    • True. I don't understand why I, as an opponent of the death penalty, am excluded from serving on capital murder juries. Since the Supreme Court declared that only a jury can impose the death penalty, it seems to me that there ought to be separate juries for the guilt-phase trial and the penalty-phase trial.
18. The experience can be traumatic and haunt you for years.
    • True.
    • But being haunted can be a good thing. Read my novella CHALK GHOST for FREE at www.TextNovel.com.
      

So, there you have 15 good reasons to want to avoid jury duty, not counting the issue of pay. However, I still maintain that you should serve if you believe in freedom and justice. Just be very sure you know what you're getting into.

In my novel, The Juror Hangs, my protagonist has a strong feeling that she should never have shown up at the courthouse for jury duty. It takes her three days in a sweltering Chicago courtroom to figure out why she feels that way: she suddenly remembers the reason in a gut-wrenching flashback to a trial in her childhood. As soon as she's assigned to a trial, she discovers that jury duty isn't the passive, leisurely task it's cracked up to be. When ultimately she causes the jury to hang, she also discovers what that term really means: The jury is hung out to dry by the press. She's stalked and shot at. In the end, she barely escapes with her life--and swears never again to serve on a jury.

The Juror Hangs is the first in "The Juror Investigates Series."

Download a copy from www.Smashwords.com before you try too hard to get out of jury duty.

Links to Webpages with Jury-Duty Avoidance Tips

How to Avoid a Summons in the First Place

Legitimate Ways to Get Out of Jury Duty

Successful but Ludicrous Ways to Get Out of Jury Duty

How Not to Get Out of Jury Duty