Jury Duty Limbo?

I recently received an Orange County jury summons. The thing is, I don’t live in Orange County and I wonder if the legal system has put me in some sort of limbo where I won’t actually serve jury duty.

I live in Los Angeles County, but I’ve spent a lot of time in Orange County: I went to school in Fullerton, I used to work in offices in Irvine, and sometimes it’s the only place to shop for certain things. A few years ago, I opened a PO box, and for a number of reasons I decided to open it at a post office in Orange County. I’ve updated my contact information in various places so that most of my mail now goes there.

In California, potential jurors are selected through records from the DMV, voter registration, and state tax filings. Out of those three, the DMV is the only place I’ve provided my PO box, so that must be where the county court got this address.

But a PO box is not a residence, and jurors must actually reside in the county where they are summoned to serve. This meant I had to request an excuse from jury duty, which wasn’t too difficult (go online, select the reason for the excuse, and provide my home address to the court).

But this got me thinking. The DMV still has my home address (which is separate from my mailing address), so it knows that I live in Los Angeles County. So why I didn’t receive a summons to serve in Los Angeles County instead? Well, this would ultimately be handled by the Los Angeles County court system, so maybe it isn’t set up to deal with a juror who lives in Los Angeles County but has a mailing address elsewhere? I’m not sure.

This is actually the second time this has happened, so I suspect I’m stuck in a sort of limbo where I keep getting Orange County jury summons and then request an excuse every time. Maybe some systems will finally get updated and I’ll actually have to serve at some point, who knows.

(Image from the Orange County Superior Court, considered to be public domain as a California government document)