ID and jury service

silverharp

I caught the start of a piece on Joe Duffy about not being required to submit ID when sitting on a jury. I was called for jury service a couple of months back and although the case didn’t go ahead in the end at no time was I asked for ID or to show the letter. Given that so many people don’t turn up there would appear to be a risk that somebody would wait for a name to be called out if no answer is given they could say that they are that person

silverside

i suppose you could chance it

but would you really want to?

you would be in big trouble if you got caught , and i think it would be hard to keep up the deception over the course of a big trial.
and courthouses tend to have lots of gardai hanging around whose job it is to know the troublemakers in an area.

johnnyskeleton

silverharp wrote:

I caught the start of a piece on Joe Duffy about not being required to submit ID when sitting on a jury. I was called for jury service a couple of months back and although the case didn’t go ahead in the end at no time was I asked for ID or to show the letter. Given that so many people don’t turn up there would appear to be a risk that somebody would wait for a name to be called out if no answer is given they could say that they are that person

This is quite a concern, especially with the possibility of planting jurors. At the risk of being indiscreet, was this in a circuit court outside of Dublin or was it the fourcourts?

I would suggest that you make your concerns known to the courts service - www.courts.ie or to the local county registrar as appropriate.

That said, the procedure is usually to call a load of names and then ask them to swear in individually. An impersonator would be very likely to be caught out in my view.

Our man in Havana

When I did jury duty, they simply picked out a name and waited for the person to step forward before proceeding to the next name. I think that it could be quiet easy to get away with it.

silverharp

johnnyskeleton wrote:

This is quite a concern, especially with the possibility of planting jurors. At the risk of being indiscreet, was this in a circuit court outside of Dublin or was it the fourcourts?

That said, the procedure is usually to call a load of names and then ask them to swear in individually. An impersonator would be very likely to be caught out in my view.

It was a civil case in the high court. It's probably a low risk event but seems funny that you need ID to set up a library account and not to sit on a jury.