Jury Duty

Boy, I have a lot of thoughts in my head as residue from serving jury duty.

First of all, I served on my first jury! Why do people dread jury duty? I guess I know why - it's a lot of red tape, it's a lot of waiting around, and then statistically your likelihood of being picked is pretty low, so in the end, it amounts to a wasted day in a courthouse.

That's how I felt initially when I reported for duty on Monday, October 28 - bored, annoyed, inconvenienced. As a matter of fact, a pre-paid business trip is grounds for being unqualified, so I really did assume that I would just report, show my upcoming plane tickets and skidaddle. But I got assigned to a random case in a courtroom.

I, along with about 50 others, report. We get assigned numbers. Then, the clerk calls 18 of the numbers to sit in the jury box along with a row of 6 alternates. The rest of us sit in the audience. It's my first time in recent memory being in a "real", active courtroom. Bailiff, clerk, defendant, lawyers. We stand on the judge's arrival and come to order. The trial is only expected to last until Wednesday, Thursday at the latest. So my business trip wouldn't excuse me regardless.

A very long, tedious process of juror questioning begins. After everyone is questioned, prosecution and defense take turns thanking and excusing jurors, at which time alternates go into the box, and more numbers are called to fill the alternate's spots. I believe I was the third one from the audience called into the row of alternates. There were some cute moments. For instance, during questioning, one potential juror was so thrilled to be there, he went on about how he's been looking forward to this since he became a citizen of this country and it's just like the movies. Everyone was laughing - jurors, audience, lawyers and judge. But, he got dismissed (wonder why??) haha.

Long story short, I was put in the chair as juror #8, accepted, and sworn in. I saw it as a good omen - lucky #8! I was kinda shocked - but excited! As a matter of fact, it started to occur to me just how statistically difficult it is to end up serving on a jury, so I felt pretty lucky.

The formality of it, and just how much it is like the movies and whatnot, it was fascinating! It helped that our judge was awesome with us and guiding us. We had witnesses, video evidence, transcriptions, the works. I really was enjoying it, and often was swayed one way or another.

I was disappointed when the defense rested. It was only Tuesday morning! We heard closing arguments and even started deliberating before lunch.

That was my favorite part - deliberating. Here we were, 12 completely random citizens - varying in ages, genders, occupations, races, ethnicity, the works. But we were all American citizens in this county over age 18, who would never be together in a room otherwise. And we got to discuss the law of the land and come to a consensus (which I recognize was not a given - hung juries happen all the time!).

But... it sucked. This case, although criminal assault in definition, was petty, in my honest opinion. As people, we thought it was stupid, we understood the defendant and saw gray area... but to the letter of the law, which was all we were tasked with doing... we had to acquiesce. It bothers me that the law doesn't seem to leave room for common sense at times. It sucked. We found him guilty, and we had to be present for the verdict in front of him and it just ugh... didn't leave a good feeling. I called Pam afterwards to debrief and try to understand this more. She even thought the case sounded wildly ridiculous to waste time in court for, and assumed there was more to this than we had seen... for instance that the prosecution had more behind the scenes but this was all they could ultimately "get" the guy for. We'll never know. I adored being part of the judicial process, but hate that I didn't have a more overwhelming feeling that justice was served.

Well, anyway, I absolutely loved it, and when the bailiff gave us our form acknowledging our time, and told us our country thanked us, I was swooning LOL. It's not a perfect system, but the fact that it's one that allows us laypeople to be involved, it's kinda awesome.

I'm looking forward to my next summons!