This makes a lot of sense. One can imagine a system where people selected for duty are asked to rank a set of dates.

Of course, there would need to be some mechanism in place to force jury duty upon those that don't take their own time to serve.

great idea. If you pre-select a time based on your schedule, you are a good citizen. If you never voluntarily sign up, you will be selected exactly as you are now. It would reward people who pre-select a date by giving them the time\\date they prefer.

Sensible. + from me.

I was recently called to Jury Duty in New York State. You are given an assigned date, but can ask for a postponement of up to six months to a date of your choosing. Also, you can volunteer for Jury service at any time.

I am pleasantly surprised to learn that the boys in Albany have, in this respect at least, bettered their counterparts in the other state capitals.

Learn about NY's system:http://www.nyjuror.com

Its a supurb idea, however, a couple of possible issues. Maybe it would be lead to more jury tampering, have you seen the movie runaway jury? Also whenever a celebraty went to trial perhaps lots of people would try to sign up for that time slot. But I suppose there are enough cases out there that it would not matter except perhaps in small towns.

ps. Anyone know how the system is working in general? I am 34 lived same place ten years and have never been called up.

In Massachusetts, you can delay your service up to a year, which is good for rescheduling to a more convenient time. I would like to see a couple of changes, though:1. "Random" selection is wrong, since you can be called several times while others never get called. (I've been called about a half-dozen times while others have never been called!) So I think that serving should take you out of the "pool" until everyone else has been selected.2. We also have a rule that you aren't required to serve if you've served within 3 years. Along the voluntary line, I'd like to see you be able to volunteer to serve several times all at once, so you could essentially get all of your life-time jury duty out of the way at once...sort of like a "lifetime credit" requirement. Once you've served enough, they can't require you to ever serve again unless, of course, you volunteer.Another idea I've heard floated is "professional" jurors. Seems like that could reduce unemployment.

Anything that makes government more accomadating to the people is good, however:

1) Many court systems are rather disorganized and overwhelmed. They'd need to get their act together before they could implement this.

2) Jurors may "aim" for particular trials. We'd probably have to be forced to sign up several months in advance to avoid this.

Excellent idea, the few details that have to be worked out would be that of the celebrity trials, but that can be easily avoided by making the trials totally random. You may know that Mickel Jacksol trial is in 2 weeks, but there is no way to ensure u are gona fall on that trial. Plus if a clear bias opf the public is shown as too many people signing for that particular spot it can be avoided by apointing random people as it is now to ensure they are not particulary fans or enemies of such a celebrity. As long as uncertainity and random are kept on the WHOS trial you are going to be i thing the voluntier option is hte best.

The greater fear here is that in any given trial many people sympathetic or antipithetic to the person on trial would volunteer and flood the jury with "friends of the accused" or "enemies of the accused".

By having juries picked totally at random either of these is effectively avoided.

Yes, but the jury pool is still selected down from a very large group (60 or 70) to the final jury. Maybe if somebody really wanted to serve on a jury they could schedule to be put in a random jury selection for that day- or maybe we could set it up so that they get questioned in one trial, and if rejected for that one they can get the option to be placed in a random jury pool the next day.

This would make it far too easy to get a corrupt or otherwise biased jury. Volunteering well in advance would not be sufficient, because most trials are scheduled months (often, many months) in advance, and there are a variety of methods by which lawyers can delay a trial further to fall within a desired window.

Once a potential juryman is on a selection panel, he my end up being selected for any one of 4 or 5 juries (or none of them, and go home). However, it is very easy to avoid being selected for the "wrong" jury: just "admit" to having strong opinions about each case until the "right" one comes up.

When it finally comes to selection, the defence lawyers will automatically accept all their shills (even though they subtly express opinions favourable to the prosecutor), and challenge as many as possible of the rest. They may not get all of their shills on the jury but just 3 or 4 would be enough to swing most decisions, and there is almost no limit to how many they can have volunteering for the panel.

It isn't just a case of gangsters corrupting a jury to make it favourable to the defence, either. Suppose in some red-neck county a black man is accused of raping a white woman; every racist in the county would volunteer for service on or around the most likely dates of the trial.

In short, random selection of juries is vital for fairness and allowing a potential juror to choose the date of his service is totally and utterly unacceptable. If a juror cannot serve at a particular date the only alternative is to defer him or her for a fixed, very long period into the future when it is extremely unlikley he or she could predict a trial to occur. And this version in fact is already allowed in most jurisdictions (you can apply for a 12 month deferment for reasons of hardship etc.)

Aside from the "trying to get on a notable case" problem identified by others, there is also the "I want to stick it to the government" problem. Probably more than 80% of the trials going on at any one time are criminal trials. To convict, most often a unanimous vote is required. Jury nullification is a real, but very under-discussed concept, in the law. Someone who thinks all prosecutions are wrong, and wants to set aside a few months of time for their cause, could volunteer for jury service over and over, and create hung juries over and over, regardless of the evidence, causing much mischief. Or the converse problem, voting to convict, over and over, regardless of the evidence.

you lose objectivity e.g. you might get racists signing up so they can sway decisions.