In USA, is it possible to end up being called to jury duty even if you have not registered to vote?

Question

My friend received a letter summoning her to jury duty.

She has not received anything like that before, even though she is now in her 40's and has been a U.S. citizen all her life. Also she never registered to vote (due to personal conviction) in any election and thought that a summon to jury duty is only sent to people who have registered to vote.

Consequently she is wondering if this summons is legitimate.

I am not able to answer from experience as I am not a U.S. citizen, but thought that I ask here:

In USA, is it possible to end up being called to jury duty even if you have not registered to vote?

Answer 1

Yes, it is possible. The requirements are (1) you are a citizen (the burden is on the prospective juror to pay attention to that requirement) and (2) the court knows that you exist and calls you up for jury duty. Apart from voter registrations, drivers license data is also used (and can be dangerous, because non-citizens can have licenses and may not know that you must be a citizen to serve on a jury). Another source in unemployment benefits lists. The correlation with voter registration is one way of avoiding that problem.

In fact, Florida law states that the list of candidates "shall be taken from the male and female persons at least 18 years of age who are citizens of the United States and legal residents of this state and their respective counties and who possess a driver license or identification card issued by the Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles", and does not sanction using voter lists. The Holmes County Supervisor of Elections confirms that only federal courts use voter lists, and state and local courts only use driver / ID card lists.

Answer 2

As a supplement to the other answers, I'll mention one notable means of securing jurors that does not involve voter registration or driver's license records.

In Colorado, there is a small municipality called Glendale, Colorado which is entirely surrounded by the City and County of Denver but is part of Arapahoe County. It has a couple of square miles or so of territory and about 3,500-4,000 adult residents, some of whom are not eligible to serve due to citizenship or other concerns, and most of whom are young adults who tend not to vote and who tend to ignore jury summonses. There are only half a dozen single family homes in the municipality, with the rest of the population living in apartment buildings or condominiums. But, it has lots of municipal court activity because it is an area with predominantly commercial development such as restaurants, strip clubs, big box stores, grocery stores, and high rise office buildings. On any given day, perhaps 50,000-100,000 people work or shop there.

Several times a year, not enough people show up at the municipal court in response to jury summonses to provide a jury pool large enough to conduct a trial on a day where someone facing criminal charges must be tried or have their charges dismissed on speedy trial grounds.

When that happens, the City of Glendale dispatches the police to roam the streets and apartment and condominium complexes of the city and the police literally apprehend random people walking down the street or going about their daily life at their homes, without warning, and deliver the people apprehended to the municipal court to serve as jurors, so that the pending criminal cases will not be dismissed. It is a bit like an ICE raid, but in reverse, because only U.S. citizens who are residents of the city are picked up.

Answer 3

Yes. I was in the exact same situation. I am in my 40's, never voted or registered to vote. I received a summons.

I found out they actually use drivers licenses to issue the summons. I believe it is common to call people in their 40's since people in their 40's tend to be more mature, but still have their mental faculties intact.

I'm not sure if the purpose of your question is "how do I get out of jury duty" but the summons usually contains options for getting out of it if you don't want to serve. I have people who rely on me so there was an option for that. At least in my case they never checked.

Answer 4

Yes - in California they simply go through the local DMV listing. As someone else mentioned, it's incredibly lazy because the burden is on you to prove that you're unqualified.

In some locations (e.g. San Diego, California) they don't follow up on jury summons because they're massively over-subscribed. Of 820k summons send out in San Diego every year 230k don't respond (that's about ~28%) and no effort is made to follow up for procedural and cost reasons: https://www.10news.com/news/empty-threat-thousands-of-san-diegans-blow-off-jury-duty

Answer 5

All US Citizens of legal age may be called up to serve on a jury^*.

States run their own court systems, and how they chose to find their citizens for jury selection is (within some constitutional limits) entirely up to them. I believe most federal courts pick jurors from the current local pool in the state in which they are convening, so they basically piggyback off of the relevant state's selection system.

Historically back before computers, the only large databases of of-age citizens and their addresses which states had easy access to was their voter rolls. So the easiest thing for them to do was to use that database to select jurors from. However, in the computer age many more databases are available. Also, it was felt that a significant part of the problem of eligible voters not registering to vote was people trying to avoid their jury duty.

So today states can easily get addresses of citizens for jury duty from any number of other databases, and some states have even passed laws against using voter rolls for this purpose. Some examples I've seen are tax rolls and drivers license databases.

So if you are refusing to vote just to get out of jury duty, that most likely won't do the job.

^{* - People called up can often get excused for various reasons of course, including things like mental incapacity, hardship, etc.}

Answer 6

Even as a non-US citizen, I received the Jury duty letter in MA. To get a waiver, you need to submit proof if you are not a U.S citizen along with relevant documentation indicating your status. So, I am not surprised that your wife (as a U.S citizen) received the notice. The letter will contain detailed information on how you can respond to the notice if you do not qualify (which was applicable in our case).