duty of the jurors

I got the summons, yep. And this was the first thing I thought of when I pondering having to report:



Ha ha hahaha!

But seriously, they wanted me for jury duty. So I sent back my info and called in on the right date, and they told me to report. I was actually sort of looking forward to it because it was new and interesting and I'd never really dealt with the justice system before. Plus I got to get out of work so...win-win! Both mom and dad had done it before so they told me to take a book because it was a game of hurry up and wait. I reported on a Monday at 8 am. With like 120 other people. Some were interested in being there and some were just the biggest grouches in the world. (I hope they don't need a jury of their peers anytime soon). I wasn't the youngest one there, but there were a lot of older people, plus a lot of retirees. After about an hour a bailiff came in and took about 30 people to be chosen for a first trial. Then after another half hour another bailiff came in to explain that we would be answering a questionnaire and then assigned us numbers and put us in numerical order. Then the actual judge came in to talk to us about a few things. It was an interesting case, the nature of it meant it would be on the long side (two weeks), and that they needed such a large pool of jurors (90). He also explained some of the rules and how things would run. We took the questionnaire and waited another 45 minutes, the bailiff then told some of us to return that afternoon and the rest to return the next morning. I got assigned the morning.

The next morning I reported and then got told to come back at 1:15. Hooray! It was weird because most of the 90 people were still there, I thought some of them would have gotten dismissed already. Then we got taken down to the courtroom. I got a nice tour of the county courthouse. We were led in, the first 12 jurors were seated in the jury box, and the rest of us sat in the benches. It was a tad scary in the fact that it was very serious, proper, and legal. And I've never been in a court room before (except the time I went to Drug Court for class-that was an awesome experience). We had to stand when the judge came in and had to take an oath to tell the truth. After that the process of Voir Dire (old French for "that which is true") began. Essentially they interview perspective jurors. Then the judge asked for people to state any reasons why they couldn't serve, ie financial hardship. He dismissed a few people. Then both the prosecutor and the defense attorneys got up and asked questions to all 90 of the prospective jurors. They each took an hour to ask questions, present situations, pose hypotheticals to see if we could be fair and impartial. They tried to show the difference between having an opinion on something and being able to set it aside in order to look at facts and then just being biased and making a decision based on that bias. They were very lawyery in their questions, you could start sensing a trap sometimes, but really they were trying to smoke out any people who would be really bad to have on a jury. I kind of enjoyed this part. It got me thinking a lot. I don't think I've used my brain that much since college. It was somewhat unusual to be kept that long as part of a jury pool, but like I said, it was a really important case that needed a lot of prepping. After that we had to have a break so all the old people could go to the bathroom. I guess 2 hours is a long time. Then the two lawyers could dismiss up to six jurors each for "Cause," meaining they could turn down a certain person, but didn't have to say why. It could be that you looked at them funny. They passed around a paper, the bailiff passed it around, and wrote numbers down and crossed things off. Twice they had to go to a "sidebar" to conference about things. Then the judge dismissed a few people and thanked them for their service, they started with the first 12 numbers. They were the jury until a few were dismissed, then they were replaced with the next highest up. They became the official jury. I was pretty high up so I wasn't even close to being selected. And then we got dismissed. That was it. The judge thanked us for coming and we were allowed to leave. It was kind of fun to see how that process works and made me appreciate the people who work to uphold the laws of the land, I guess I'm a nerd. Yay America.