What to know if you get called for jury duty in Philadelphia now

After some breaks and disruptions because of the pandemic, in-person jury trials have resumed in Philadelphia, which means that you can get called for jury duty. But, like everything else, it doesn’t look exactly the same as it did before COVID-19.

Philadelphia courts suspended jury trials in March 2020. Criminal jury trials made a brief return in September, but were suspended again in November as COVID-19 case counts began to climb again. Civil jury trials remained suspended until earlier this month. Now, both are back with some alterations.

“We want to balance safety, we want to balance people’s rights, we want to balance access,” says Gabriel Roberts, a spokesperson for the First Judicial District of Pennsylvania. “We had a lot of really good leaders trying to make sure this is done in a way that made it familiar to people, but also emphasized the safety precautions during a pandemic.”

Restarting jury trials hasn’t been easy. Trials have been delayed because of possible COVID-19 exposure. Vaccine access for courthouse workers and others who have to appear in person has also been an issue.

For now at least, jury trials are back on, and so is jury duty. Here is what you need to know:

You will receive a document known as a summons, which gets mailed to your home. It’s essentially a court order that details when and where you’ll need to appear — either at City Hall for a civil case or the Justice Juanita Kidd Stout Center for Criminal Justice for criminal cases. You will also receive a questionnaire about who you are and where you live, which you need to return within five days of you receiving it, according to the Philadelphia Courts website (it can also be filled out online).

Jury selection is random, and pulls from voter registrations and Bureau of Motor Vehicles lists, so don’t feel like you’re being singled out.

To qualify for service, you must meet several requirements, including:

You do not have to do jury duty if:

Because a juror summons is a court order, ignoring it could result in a fine of up to $500, or even imprisonment for no more than 10 days.

Philadelphia once had a court dedicated to folks who skip out on jury duty. Juror Scofflaw Court was launched in 2000 by Common Pleas Court Judge John W. Herron, but took a long hiatus before returning in 2014, when it brought in a few hundred scofflaws, according to an Inquirer report. That program hasn’t been used since 2016.

More than one-third of Philadelphians don’t respond to calls for jury service, according to a 2018 study from the First Judicial District. In an informal survey, residents cited a number of reasons, including scheduling conflicts, low juror pay ($9 a day for the first three days, and $25 a day after that), mistrust of the criminal justice system, and family and financial hardships.

Jury duty is one of only a few civic duties we have, as well as one that can have a real, direct impact, says Roberts, and it’s “a shame” that we have low response rates (though that problem is not unique to Philly).

“If you don’t like what’s being done in the justice system, if you feel as though police are treating your community unfairly, or if you feel like you want more of a presence in your community, whatever your bag is, you can come to jury duty, and you can have a say for at least one day in one case in one person’s life,” he says. “This is liberty we’re talking about here.”

If you have a conflict with the date of your jury duty, or have an issue that prevents you from serving, the court will consider a request for postponement of your appearance, or, in cases of extreme hardship, excuse you entirely. During the pandemic, Roberts says, those accommodations may also apply to concerns about COVID-19.

“We tend to be forgiving when it comes to excuses for jurors because we don’t want to create hardships for people,” Roberts says.

You can request to postpone online on the questionnaire portion of your summons, and in most cases, you should be able select a new date that works better for you.

If you have an extreme hardship that prevents serving — like medical or physical issues, trouble finding child care, or lost wages — make a note of that on the “remarks” section of the questionnaire. You will need to provide a letter, from someone line your doctor or boss, to certify the hardship.

If you have questions about postponing, you can call the Jury Commission at 215-683-7170.

When you go to either City Hall or the CJC, you’ll notice a few changes, starting with the familiar CDC guidelines, such as required masking, social distancing, plenty of hand sanitizer and disinfectant wipes, enhanced cleaning, and acrylic glass partitions to separate folks where distancing is not possible. You’ll also be asked COVID-19 screening questions by jury staff.

There will be fewer people around, as the city is conducting limited jury trials, so don’t expect the same bustling, “Grand Central Station feel” of yesteryear, Roberts says.

If you’re called for a civil trial, you’ll be one of about 80 potential jurors — or two full panels — asked to come in on Thursdays and Fridays, and there are plans to increase that to 120 people in April. If you’re called for a criminal trial, you’ll be one of about 120 potential jurors and will have to come in Monday through Thursday.

Juror groups will be kept in two separate rooms in each building to accommodate social distancing. The initial “voir dire,” or process in which judges and counsel ask jurors questions to determine whether they should be on the jury, will happen in those rooms, following by an individual voir dire in a separate room.

If you are selected to serve, there will be more noticeable changes, Roberts says, mostly to the setup of the courtroom. For example, rather than sitting in a jury box, where social distancing isn’t possible, you’ll be sitting in the “gallery” of the room, or the area where members of the public would usually sit. The “well” of the courtroom, or where most of the action takes place, will have spaced out tables and chairs for trial participants. Judges and other court staff will be in their usual spots but separated by acrylic glass.

Additionally, to accommodate public access, civil trials are livestreamed via YouTube. Criminal trials were also streamed online in the past, but, Roberts says, will now have a feed into a separate courtroom in the CJC, where people in the courthouse can watch the proceedings live.

“All these little things come together to make the experience a little different in terms of what you’re seeing in front of you,” Roberts says. “But justice is still moving along.”

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