Most people try to find a way out of jury duty, and Jacob Clark of West Yarmouth, Mass., had a ready-made excuse: He’s only 9-years-old.
“I got jury duty,” said Jacob Clark.
When 9-year-old Jacob Clark received a summons for jury duty at Orleans District Court, the third-grader had only one question:
“I said, ‘What's jury duty?’”
At this stage of the game, Jacob is more interested in riding his bike than determining guilt or innocence. But he seems to have a good handle on how it all works:
“If you're picked then you go up to a judge and you say if they're guilty or not guilty.”
His father, Robert Clark said, “I think he'd do well…I think he's impartial. He'd be able to be objective, as long as there was no jury tampering. If someone offered him an Xbox game, he would do as he's asked; but besides that, he's a very impartial kid.”
The only thing barring Jacob from this civic duty is he's nine years too young:
“If he was born in '82, then I would have been his father when I was two years old, so...it didn't make sense to me,” said Jacob’s father.
According to the state's jury commissioner, census records in Jacob's hometown of Yarmouth indicate he was born in 1982, which would make him thirty instead of nine.
Jury Commissioner of Massachusetts, Pamela J. Wood said, “It could have been a data entry error at the town, it could have been on the census form that the parents fill out, it could have been that it was hard to read.”
But now, Jacob is reading, “Summons for jury service, Wednesday, April 18, 2012…”
But this isn't the first time Jacob was called for jury duty. He first got summonsed when he was two, which he described in one word:
"Weird."
And if he gets summonsed again, Jacob says, he's ready:
“Then, if I was 18 or older, I probably... I would have to go.”