Taking jury duty seriously

Mandatory community service is not just for people who violate traffic laws, commit petty crimes and fail to pay parking tickets. It's also the consequence for some people who suggest that serving on a federal jury for $40 a day is too much of a financial burden.

That is the lesson two potential jurors learned when they asked to be excused from a pool called in to serve in the three-week trial against real-estate consultant Donald Davidson.

U.S. District Judge Roger Hunt ordered a man and a woman to complete 40 hours of community service when they explained that serving on the jury would interfere with their regular jobs and they would be adversely affected by the loss of income.

Hunt said he only recently began ordering community service, and does it rarely. It is effective in emphasizing the importance of fulfilling civic duties, he said.

"I was putting others on notice that if they're telling me, 'I'm really busy and I can't do this,' they may have to face another alternative," Hunt said. "Jury service is an obligation, and if it's inconvenient, I'll let you fulfill your obligations to the public another way."

The woman was a hairdresser who said she could not cancel three weeks worth of appointments. The man owned a small construction company that had landed a lucrative contract a day earlier.

Hunt excused another potential juror, who worked a graveyard shift, without punishment.

The judge acknowledged that he uses his discretion when deciding which jurors should do community service and which he releases.

In Hunt's courtroom, gone are the days when potential jurors eager to get out of their responsibility simply tell the judge they believe the defendant is straight-up guilty.

"When I get people like that, oftentimes I will get alerted by the jury clerk," Hunt said. "They will say they have someone who is really being a jerk about the whole thing."

Hunt excused a woman who said she believed former Clark County Commissioner Erin Kenny, a government witness who testified in the Davidson trial, accepted bribe money and cheated her constituents. The woman told Hunt she felt she was biased.

But Hunt did not believe the woman was simply dodging jury duty.

"It was a judgment call on my part," Hunt said. "My feeling was it was an honest legitimate problem for her. She would have had a hard time believing anything she heard. I don't believe she was just trying to get out of it."

Jury administrator Jane Hybarger said it is uncommon for judges to order potential jurors to community service, but it has occurred sporadically over the years. She said jurors are referred to HELP of Southern Nevada, which assigns jurors to an organization or cause and monitors their work.

Hybarger said the court does not keep statistics on how many potential jurors are asked to complete community service each year.

Maria Valverde, program manager for the Community Alternative Sentence at HELP, said the organization received 11 potential jurors in 2005, three in 2006 and five so far this year.

The organization reports to the court whether jurors fulfill their obligation, Hybarger said. The court has never received notice that a juror didn't show up for community service.

Seating a jury for a highly publicized case that has sparked community outrage is not easy. Davidson was accused of paying off Kenny and attempting to bribe then-Las Vegas City Councilman Michael McDonald. Davidson was found guilty of the charges related to McDonald, but the jury deadlocked on the counts to which Kenny testified.

Hunt brought in more than 100 potential jurors because of publicity surrounding the case and the expected length of the trial.

Hunt said he has not noticed whether more potential jurors are trying to wriggle out of the job, but few come into his chambers eager to serve for $40 a day. In the end, most jurors appreciate the experience, he said.

"They come not wanting to do it, but they are really glad they did," he said.

Hunt said he has never held in contempt jurors who fail to fulfill their community service obligations. But he has never encountered a situation in which the person simply did not show up. In some cases, he acknowledged, the excused juror begins the service, but cannot complete it because of scheduling conflicts.

"I don't want to hold anyone in contempt or throw them in jail if someone refused to do it or were unable to do it," Hunt said. "I just want to know they feel like they fulfilled their duty."

However, if a juror blatantly snubs community service, Hunt said he would consider hitting the panelist with a contempt of court charge.

Federal judges' approach to unwilling jurors differs from District Court judges, according to Michael Sommermeyer, court spokesman at the Regional Justice Center.

"For the most part, what our entire feeling has been if you're not willing to serve, we probably don't want you as a juror," Sommermeyer said. "They will usually be excused if they have gotten to the point they won't back down on the excuse."

However, jurors are not completely let off the hook. Some judges send the juror to the chief judge's courtroom on a Friday, when those facing failure to appear charges are on the calendar.

"If you come in on a Friday and explain to the chief judge why you didn't want to serve on the jury, the chief judge will often reschedule the (jury) service so they would have to do it anyway," Sommermeyer said.

He said there are no longer exemptions for jury duty. Doctors, law enforcement officers and attorneys were once excused automatically. They must now sit through the jury selection process with the chance of being selected.