There may come a day when you receive a summons for jury duty and a jury affidavit questionnaire. If you are not a resident of Arizona you are not required to attend jury duty. See Arizona Revised Statute 21-201.
If you obtain an Arizona driver’s license, Arizona (or at least the Maricopa County Jury Office) may consider you a resident of Arizona. Title 21 of the Arizona Revised Statutes does not define resident or residence. The statute does allow creation of a “master jury list” using driver license records.
People frequently associate and confuse the terms residence and domicile. In the legal context, residence ordinarily means the place where a person physically lives. Domicile refers to a person’s true, principal and permanent home, to which that person intends to return and remain even though he or she may be currently residing elsewhere. A person may have multiple residences at one time, while having only one domicile.
Jury services uses names from county voter registration lists and from the Arizona Department of Transportation records to create the master jury list. Jury services states that if you receive an Arizona driver’s license, your name goes into the list of potential jurors.
A potential way around this issue is to use the address from your state of permanent residence (or domicile), when obtaining your driver’s license. If you use an out of state address, Arizona has less proof that you are a resident of the jurisdiction, as required to be a juror by A.R.S 21-201. Today many states allow individuals to renew their licenses via mail; this is another way to avoid having issues with serving as a juror in Arizona.
For those of you who have changed your residence to Arizona, failure to attend jury duty may subject you to penalties under Arizona Revised Statute 21-223. Don’t fret, however, as jurors receive a whopping $12 per day, as well as mileage reimbursement (if you take the bus, you will not receive mileage reimbursement). Checks for jury service usually arrive within four weeks of the completion of your service.
For more information, call the 56th FW/JA at 623-856-6901.