Student brought to court in chains for shirking jury duty

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/6978779.html ^

[Orange1998]

A 19-year-old college freshman missed class Tuesday when a federal judge decided to teach her a civics lesson by ordering federal marshals to haul her in chains from school to court to explain why she shirked jury duty.

Kelsey Gloston stood in ankle and wrist restraints in court Tuesday afternoon wearing flip flops, a tight white T-shirt, short-shorts and sporting green streaks in her hair. Though she rolled her eyes and looked impatient while waiting for the judge, once U.S. District Judge David Hittner took the bench her tears flowed.

The judge was incensed that the teen had hung up on jury clerks calling to get her to the courthouse.

“You in effect went right at the jury folks and said you'd have nothing to do with it,” Hittner said sternly. “I'm going to hear exactly what your problem is with jury duty and what your problem is with how our country operates.”

The judge released Gloston, who said she's a pre-nursing student at Lone Star College's Cy-Fair campus, to return with a lawyer for a hearing Thursday on whether he should find her in contempt and possibly detain her.

Gloston is not the typical jury duty scofflaw. She did not entirely ignore her jury summons.

[cynwoody]

We the jury lack essential exhibits ...

♥ D@ BL@CX!C@N QU33N ♥

[PA Engineer]

It ain’t hard to get out of jury duty.

I know. Just tell them your an Engineer and they send you out the door with a stamped parking ticket. I've only made it past voir dire once and was sent home because the parties went back to negotiations.

[PA Engineer]

what irked me was that the measly $40 per day

Quit complaining. They only pay $14 here.

[shezza]

DMV? No government agency in Texas by that name. Drivers licenses are issued by the Department of Public Safety (DPS)

You are correct. Of course that slip invalidates my entire post, because an error of that magnitude indicates I don't know what the hell I'm talking about and undoubtedly made the whole thing up. Never mind that I've lived in 6 additional states in the last 20 years and the state where we're currently deployed DOES have a DMV, which is where my kids have been getting their permits and licenses. But never mind that. I'm just a lying liar who lies, right?

(rolling eyes)

[Bubba Ho-Tep]

All she had to do to get out of jury duty is mention that she’s aware of the 1895 supreme court decision in the 1895 Sparf vs The US case and there isn’t a prosecutor in the country who would allow her to serve on a jury.

Yeah, but first you've got to show up at the courthouse, get picked for a pool and go through the questioning to get to that part. Plus there are lots of civil cases where your knowledge of jury nullification doesn't really apply.