I am no longer a jury duty virgin. I went to the courthouse yesterday and
performed my civic duty. The process
itself was interesting to watch and they were pretty efficient given the 80
people that showed up for service that day.
I had built up in my head that I was going to be stuck in the courthouse
all day, but in actuality I was done and freed by lunch time. They began by splitting us up into 3 groups
for the 3 different cases that were going on that day (2 civil and 1
criminal). I was crossing my fingers
that I would end up in the criminal case room.
I figured if I was going to serve as a juror the criminal case would be
the most exciting.
My group was brought upstairs to the
courtroom where the judge questioned all 30 of us about our general
background. Things like, where we were
born, where we currently lived, marital status, number of kids, occupation,
etc. I was pretty psyched to find out we
were being questioned for the criminal case but when the judge mentioned that
the trial would last for approximately 10 days that balloon deflated a little
bit. After the questioning we were all
led out to the hall where we waited for the lawyers to make their
decision. After about only 15 minutes
they called us all back in and announced who the jurors would be. This particular case only needed 3 additional
jurors since they had filled most of the jury from last week’s pool, so the
odds of me getting picked were really low.
Unknown to us, it turned out that the 3 they needed also had to be men
so there was no way I was ever getting picked to begin with.
A small piece of me is a little bummed that I
didn’t get picked. I think it would have
been cool to go through the process. But
I’m happy to not be driving to the courthouse for the next 10 days and sitting
through testimony and evidence. Now I’m
free for the next 6 years!
