FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — One by one, jurors answered Judge Robert A. Rosenberg when he asked whether serving a trial of four to five weeks would be a hardship. Chemelle Charles, a nurse, said it definitely would: “I’m the only one working in my house right now.”
Ms. Charles’s husband, a lumberyard employee, was laid off in July, she said. On that recent morning, Judge Rosenberg dismissed Ms. Charles, along with more than half of the 80 potential jurors he interviewed, many of them for similar reasons.
Few people like jury duty. But for many people squeezed by the recession, a jury summons holds a new fear: financial ruin.
