Tuesday, August 31, 2010

She's been summoned

Dear Ministry of Justice
Thank you for inviting my mother to attend jury service. She was flattered by this belated gesture recognising her status as a New Zealand citizen who is neither insane nor criminally minded.

However there are several reasons why she is unable to attend:
1. my mother does not speak English well unless she is trying to get a good price
2. she is very deaf and would require every witness to speak at their highest volume - possibly with the addition of a microphone
3. her eyesight is poor, and will probably have trouble distinguishing the defendant from the judge
4. at the advanced aged of 85, I wonder whether my mother is in fact within an acceptable age range for jury duty
5. she won't get a bus to court each day so you'd have to call her up a (taxpayer-funded) taxi every day

Yours faithfully
V

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Chortle - is she able to get out of it? I did Jury Service a few years ago... it was a pain in the bum. And (insert here long convoluted story) when it came to the deliberation we didn't get to have any dinner cause everyone else wanted to stay deliberating (as you can guess, I wanted to have dinner) and we had to keep traipsing out to the car park for tedious cigarette breaks.

Anonymous said...

If your mum gets on the jury you'll have to remind her to not post the outcome on her Facebook status ;-)

Violet said...

Apparently just being 65 years old is enough of an excuse not to be on the jury. I've been called up twice, but the first time I didn't get my name called up once I turned up at the courthouse, and the other time I had to turn 'em down 'cos I had a baby to look after.
My mum doesn't have a Facebook account - she doesn't even know how to use her tv remote and it's only got 5 buttons on it!

Desiree said...

Oh yeah! MOJ are hilarious - my nana got summoned three times and each time my mum wrote back for pretty much the reasons you listed for your mum, but mainly for number 1. The third time they rang Mum to ask if Nana would be interested in an interpreter's role - go figure. I'm up for it for the third time myself in about two weeks - I don't see it as a pain because I believe in doing my bit as a citizen. I'll just curl up with a good book and catch up on my reading! :o)

Angela said...

Well it would make for an intresting story