What happens if you ignore a jury duty summons in California?
Iu2019d like to add an answer to this pool, because some of these answers are preachy and donu2019t address the practical question of what to do if you find yourself in the situation where you missed/ignored/forgot that you had jury duty.I am currently through my week of jury summons right now and have an explanation as to why some people say that it doesnu2019t matter whether you go or not and others say youu2019ll get in trouble.Itu2019s Wednesday and so far this week, I checked my summons and my group number has not been called to actually report to go in. There are quite a few groups of people that are on call u2023 like me u2023 and maybe 5% of those groups have actually been requested to physically show up this week so far (I can see this because itu2019s all publicly available on the court website).I believe, based on the other answers here (and other research) that if your jury group IS called to physically show up and donu2019t, California will issue a passive u201cbench warrantu201d that will show up on your record. But if your group ISNu2019T called to show up during your jury summons week, then itu2019s no different than if you just ignored or forgot your jury summons.In other words, thereu2019s no difference between what Iu2019m doing now u2023 checking each day to see if my group is supposed to report in u2023 and not responding to the summons. In both cases, the court system doesnu2019t know whether Iu2019m doing anything at all, since I havenu2019t been asked to register, log in, or contact them personallyu2023 Iu2019ve just been checking the public website and finding that my group doesnu2019t need to report in.So I think whether you actually get a bench warrant issued or not depends on whether your group gets called during the jury summons week, which also depends on how many court cases there are that week that require juries.Anyway, thatu2019s my educated guess of whatu2019s going on based on what I am seeing of how the system currently operates as a potential juror. Iu2019m not implying that anyone should shirk their civic duty, you certainly should not!