Impromtu jury duty

Judging from Maggie's How To Get Out of Jury Duty & David's dispatches from jury duty (maybe: "How to Get Into Jury Duty"?), we at mental_floss definitely haven't shied away from how to cope with the litigious life. I haven't actually had to/had the pleasure to serve on a Los Angeles jury yet, but I did cast the syndicated "Jury Duty" television show last year...Maybe there's some viable conflict of interest there that would get me off the hook.

But at least I haven't yet encountered "emergency jury duty"--as the people of Greeley, CO have recently:

After 161 out of 200 people failed to show up for jury duty, the Greeley courts resorted to what they refer to as "emergency jury duty subpoenas" — picking 50 random people off the street and forcing them to participate in jury duty. Citizens were approached on the sidewalk, in the supermarket and even at the local gym. But these people didn't just happily volunteer their sweaty armpits and grocery bags full of spoiling milk to sit through a riveting trial. Instead, they were threatened with contempt of court citations if they refused to drop the day's plans for a seat in the jury.

And that's the third time in the last two months they've had to launch such surprise attacks! The best quote was from Karen McMillan:

By early Wednesday afternoon, more than 50 people had reported to emergency jury duty, many perturbed that they had to drop everything to possibly serve on a jury.     "I have like 5 tons of stuff to do at work," McMillan said.