Who chooses who to select for jury service and how?
It is purely random, names being drawn from the electoral list. As a result of the 2003 Criminal Justice Act, every person on the electoral roll, (who has lived in the UK for five years) is eligible for jury service. The only exceptions are people deemed to have “mental disorders”, people over 70 years-old or people who have been disqualified from jury service, such as those with criminal convictions. This means you will be liable to attend jury service, regardless of your job or commitments. Before the Act was passed, members of the armed forces, practising doctors, nurses, midwives, dentists, vets and chemists could all be excused from jury service, this is no longer the case. Although members of the armed service may be excluded if their commanding officer can certify that it would be, “prejudicial to the efficiency of the service if that member were to be required to be absent from duty”. You can plead “extraordinary circumstances” to avoid having to attend, but mere inconvenience
