Judges, lawyers, court clerks, and bailiffs.. all are duty bound to report any and all violations they see or hear about.

As for not getting thrown of the jury for being college educated, technical professional.. easy .. neither lawyer had any challenges left after the swap.

In my case, the lawyers both used up their 3 free challenges and couldn't find any cause to remove additional potential jurors. So 12 people impaneled for a murder of a child case. Then the lawyers looked at the make up of the jury... 11 women, 1 man.. so the defense lawyer called for a rotation of the potential jurors. (96 people called - 15 excused for various reasons mostly age young or old, leaving 81 people sitting in numbered chairs .. at the finish of jury selection anyone sitting in seats 1-12 were the jury, the rotation consisted a basically of randomly calling a row number to replace another row.. so rows 1 and 2 were dismissed.. I had the misfortune of sitting on called row). After the rotation, the jury was 7 women, 5 men.. which is about as balanced as can be expected with the degree of randomness involved.

The problem is the circle of friends. If you violate the judges orders, you are in contempt of court no matter where you are.. Within 3 degrees of separation, my wife and I know probably 100 couples (so 200) people that are connected to the court. All it takes is one off handed remark in the presence of any of those 200 people to start an investigation and possibly get you sited with contempt (probably a light sentence if the judge determines it had no material affect on the out come of the trial vs a potentially substantial penalty -- felony record with jail time in Texas if the judge determines there needs to be a retrial.)

So, I guess it is all up to how willing you are to risk a felony record and a few years of jail time for not following instructions.

I would suggest that if you do violate the judge's orders, don't get divorced for the next 3-5 years, as your spouse might just decide to inform the courts of your wrong doing. :-)

Then how are you going to stay caught up at work?

        I won't I'm on jury duty and can't use the internet.

You needed to raise this issue with the judge. I'm sure* an exception should have been carved out for you to continue to do your job in the evening.

* IANAL, or ever was in the same situation, but judges tend to be fairly reasonable to important issues when it's totally discresionary on their part.

Well in my situation, the response from the Judge was that is an economic situation and economic situations are specifically covered by the law. Here in Texas Judges are not allowed to make any exceptions for economic situations. Get called for jury duty, which will impact your attendance leading to you being fired. Tough. It is against the law to fire or punish someone for being called for jury duty. However, your only recourse is to sue your company and it is d*mn hard to prove that they fired you for being on a jury.

In Texas, it is defined as contempt of court and only requires the judge to sentence you.. no trial involved.

Watch out, refusing to serve jury duty is punishable by jail time, which is suspect isn't as much fun as serving on a jury :-)

Best way to avoid being selected for a jury is to serve on one that convicts someone and selects a harsh sentence. If you achieve this you will forever be on the defense attorney's free strike list.

The issue is people using the internet to look up information that they have been told they can't use when deliberating.

Things like the defendants personal wealth, criminal record, information on "evidence" that has been ruled inadmissible or just plain trying to stir up public opinion in an effort to sway the court.

On the flip side some defendants have tried harassing jurors via their personal electronics or having some one physically show up at a jurors residence or place of work.

However, given that most juries are not sequestered, this like all the other instructions depend on honesty of the juror and the people they associate with.

Having been on a non-sequestered jury for a murder trail, it is a pain in the butt to go home after a day in the jury box and not be able to watch the evening news, read the days newspaper,just surf the internet or discuss with your significant other (all things banned by the judge in his instructions).

How was your day?

Jury duty all day.

What type of case?

Can't tell you.

How long will it last?

Can't tell you?

I'm going to bed, will you watch the news and tell me what the weather will be like tomorrow?

Sorry, I can't watch the news.

Well, then look it up on the internet.

Sorry, I'm not allowed to use the internet.

Then how are you going to stay caught up at work?

I won't I'm on jury duty and can't use the internet.

and on and on and on

If the customer really, really wants to know what is the advantage for him.. the simple answer is continued access to the internet.

The only winners in this case will be the lawyers....

most professors can't write on the board, overhead or on the power point without talking to the class or themselves.

The difference is that a Kindle can't, yet, be read by a scanner. Most of the blind folks I've met in the last 5 years have a personal, hand held scanner for reading books that are not yet available in braille or for documents handed out in class.

sarcasm on

Isn't that the function of Great CEOs... first drive the company into the ground will getting multi-million dollar bonus for cost reductions and stock value, then sell it to some hedge fund at a profit of 2 or 3x the share price for all share holders, which always includes the hedge fund paying the execs to exercise their options on 10s of millions of shares, thus increasing, yet again, shareholder value. Ah..the bright side of capitalism

sarcasm off

Seriously, so many at the Executive level haven't got a clue about what their company does and to make up for it simply rely on what the bean counters are telling them.

Highly unlikely as there is probably some astrisk or footnote stating that unlimited doesn't really mean unlimited and that it is not their fault if you failed to have your attorney approve the agreement before you signed it.

And by the way the ToS, specifically states that AT&T can change the cost of the unlimited-pda-smartphone-iphone data plans at will.