Oh foolish me!! Of course you had to be a male and 21 -- I'm afraid I was thinking in 18th century mode where that would have been a given. Sorry about that. Peter On Thu, 12 Apr 2001 10:40:08 -0400, Melinda Skinner <[log in to unmask]> wrote: >Surely you had to be male and of a certain age, as well. No? > >Melinda Skinner * ><[log in to unmask]> > > >-----Original Message----- >From: Peter V. Bergstrom [mailto:[log in to unmask]] >Sent: Thursday, April 12, 2001 10:43 AM >To: [log in to unmask] >Subject: Re: Jury Qualification. > > >In order to be chosen for either a Grand Jury or a Petit Jury, you had to >be a freeholder -- i.e. a property holder. Jury qualifications are re- >enacted at various points in time and can be found in Hening's Statuates. > > >I'm sorry I'm not answereing this from my home office, so I can't come up >with the full citations at this time. > >Propery holders never made up more that 10-20% of the free population of >most counties, hence the jury selection pool was always small. Moreover, >the selection had to be made from among those qualified who happened to be >available at Court at the time of the trial, hence making the pool even >smaller for any given trial. Impartiality was not a qualification for jury >duty -- at least not in the sense we'd think of it today. Knowing >something about the facts of the case at issue was actually considered to >be a desireable qualification! > >I hope this helps, > >Peter V. Bergstrom > > > >On Thu, 12 Apr 2001 09:53:31 EDT, [log in to unmask] wrote: > >> In researching court records for the 1750-1775 timeframe in the >Northern >>Neck of VA., I find repeated mention of the Sheriff being ordered to summon >>'qualified' persons for jury duty. >> >> In reviewing jury lists, the persons served over and over again, but >>they represent only a small fraction of the total male population of any >>given county at any given time. >> >> What was the qualification for serving on a jury in this period? >> >> Bill Balderson >> >>To subscribe, change options, or unsubscribe, please see the instructions >>at http://listlva.lib.va.us/archives/va-hist.html > >To subscribe, change options, or unsubscribe, please see the instructions >at http://listlva.lib.va.us/archives/va-hist.html > >To subscribe, change options, or unsubscribe, please see the instructions >at http://listlva.lib.va.us/archives/va-hist.html To subscribe, change options, or unsubscribe, please see the instructions at http://listlva.lib.va.us/archives/va-hist.html