What happens at jury selection? (Part 1)

Many of you have probably at some point been called for jury duty. Most often, the trials we have are for felony offenses, so the trial takes place in District Court. In this article, I’ll talk about what happens during jury selection for a typical felony trial.

The first step of the process is creating the list of people who will be summoned for jury duty. This list is randomly generated from citizens who live in Milam County. Once the list is created, the District Clerk’s office will send out the cards that let you know you have been chosen and tell you when and where to show up.

Once you show up to the courthouse on the day of jury selection, you get seated in the order that list assigned you. This is, again, completely random. From there, the District Judge will make sure you are qualified to serve on a jury. The Texas Government Code lists the requirements to be able to serve on a jury. For the most part, anyone over 18 years old who is a citizen of the United States and of Milam County can sit on a jury.

After making sure you are qualified, next comes the exemptions. Exemptions are ways you can get out of jury service. There is again a list of exemptions in the Texas Government Code that covers nine different exemptions that would get you out of jury duty. The most common exemption that typically comes up is having to care for a child or other person who cannot care for themselves.

After the qualifications and exemptions comes the excuses. The law requires the judge to listen to any excuse that someone may want to give to get out of jury duty. Over the years, we have heard some pretty good excuses (such as having surgery the next day) and some not-so-great excuses (“I’ve got a tee time coming up”). It is up to the judge whether someone’s excuse is a valid enough reason to excuse them from jury duty.

This is all just at the start of jury selection. Next week, I’ll write about the next phase of jury selection where the lawyers ask everyone questions. As always, I am available for questions or comments at daoffice@milamcounty.net.