Man Arrested For Chronic Jury Duty Dereliction While At Courthouse For Other Biz

Owen Fazenbaker I, and Owen Fazenbaker II, apparently could have done a little better job teaching one of their kin about the importance of civic duty and responsibility to their community. In this case, that civic duty was jury duty, something Owen Fazenbaker III allegedly chose to skip several times.

But when Fazenbaker III recently showed up in a courthouse to pursue a different, child-related legal matter, his predilection for missing jury duty came to light, and authorities put him under arrest, reports the Associated Press.

And since it wasn’t just a few times Owen Fazenbaker III, a 32-year-old Pennsylvania man, skipped jury duty, his chances of coming up with a legitimate excuse for all his jury duty absences were about poor to impossible, Fazenbaker III reportedly having shirked jury duty a whopping 11 times over the past two years.

But it wasn’t just jury duty that Fazenbaker III didn’t really want any part of. Paying child support also isn’t apparently high on Fazenbaker III’s want-to-do list, or at least that’s why he reportedly showed up at the courthouse, delivering himself right into the hands of the law for missing jury duty 11 times while trying to get the court to relieve him of some of his child support burdens.

Sent before a judge to try to explain why he’d missed jury duty so many times, Fazenbaker III threw himself at the mercy of the court — for good reason, too.

Somerset County, Pennsylvania, Judge D. Gregory Geary had the option of leveling a fine of $500 dollars and 10 days behind bars for each time Fazenbaker had missed jury duty. Do the math and one can see the punishment adds up to a pretty stiff lesson via loss of time and money.

Fazenbaker III obviously wanted to avoid this no-jury punishment, however, and pleaded with the judge, promising that he’d never miss jury duty again and would always serve on any jury he was asked to in the future.

Judge D. Gregory Geary took some time to inject some comedy into the proceeding, telling Fazenbaker III he found it “ironic” that Fazenbaker III managed to get to the courthouse to try to change his child-support situation, but couldn’t find it to serve jury duty.

But in the end, the Judge chose a relatively lenient judgement, telling Fazenbaker III to just pay a $500 dollar fine, which would also kept him out of a seven-day stint behind bars.

Though Fazenbaker III was let off relatively easy, according to Legal Zoom, depending on what state you live in, missing jury duty could lead to significant fines and/or jail time.

Michigan just recently gave jury-duty-dodgers like Fazenbaker III a chance at amnesty if they turned themselves in and promised to do jury duty in the future.

Have you ever ignored your jury duty notice? If so, be careful not to pull a Fazenbaker III, and go to the courthouse for some other reason.

[Image via Facebook]