Why not? It's not as if the exemption questionnaire on the back of the summons has a checkbox for it.

I've been called for jury duty any number of times. Not once has anyone ever called me, personally, out of one room and into another - always as part of a group of selectees heading to a courtroom or voir dire or whatever. Between that and everything else, it doesn't seem like a leap at all.

> Seems like a hell of a leap. What are the odds someone is being abused concurrent with jury duty vs any other time in their life up until that point?

Not really. In abusive relationships, the abuser often controls every aspect of the abused person's life and there are not opportunities to seek help without the abuser knowing. It's why there are sometimes signs in the bathrooms of women's health clinics informing the patient to initial their sample cup in red marker if they are being abused or have something that they wish to discuss in private. This may well have been one of her only chances to speak with someone without an abuser knowing.

She was the only one called back when the selection was complete. I've been called for jury duty several times and this has never happened while I was there.

We've all heard that cliched phrase about the word "assume."

This happened in a courthouse, not a hospital. I think the context of the discussion behind closed doors could have just as easily been "that is so bad you really need to consider reporting it" or even something more mundane. In any case, seems a little farcical to assume that meant she was actively being abused though it certainly seems like a decent one of many possibilities.

I'm not saying your theory isn't plausible. I'm saying you're getting tunnel vision on the first plausible thing you came across.

I think that you may have misunderstood me. The woman left the room to discuss the matter, returned to the court room in tears, and was called back again after the selection process was completed.

I hear hoofbeats and I don't think that it's zebras.

A notable trait of courthouses is that they are very frequently attended by law enforcement officers to whom such a report could be made.

Especially given how little interest court personnel typically take in individual panelists, why assume everyone with whom you're putting so much effort into arguing is so probably wrong in our analysis of what this interaction likely was?

Abuse is often ongoing for long periods of time, so I don't know that it's necessarily implausible.