I mean, have you received a summons (letter) from the courts telling you that you’re selected to be a juror. You show up to the courts and assigned a number along with being asked about occupation, status or whether you know anything related to the case in question & etc. but is the probability on becoming part of the 12 jurors that high? Is it also a criminal offense for failing to show up?

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[–] RealCaptPicard@lemmy.ca 1 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

I'm a little bit late to the question, but I think I can give some interesting information on the topic. When you are selected to be a candidate juror you are consided you can be summoned for any process needed for a block of 3 months if I remember correctly. I was summoned 3 times and 2 times in less than 2 months.

As for how the process is handled by the judge. Some starts by receiving every candidate jurors that want be excluded for either knowing any one implicated in the process or for personal reasons before randomly picking juror. Some judge goes directly randomly picking jurors and verifying with them if there are reasons they should or would be excluded (for personal reason or for knowing someone implicated in the process). I have seen both approaches.

When your number comes up, you will be led to another room with the judge and attorneys from the defense and the prosecution. The judge will ask you your age and current job title and the attorneys from both camps can reject you as a juror.

For the question about if it is criminal to not report to summon, I remember the judge asking the person controlling the presence (assistant sheriff? I don't remember the title) to report the list of missing candidate jurors to the prosecution.

As for the chances, my number came up once in the last 2 times I was summoned and I was rejected by the defense attorneys. The other time I was summoned was for the filtering process on a pool of few thousands candidate jurors for a process expected to last at least 18 months.

Last thing that I find interesting is that the process of selecting the candidate jurors list is based on the electoral list and, for province of Québec at least, on how your last name relate to the language the process will be held.