jury duty

Yesterday, I had to go to the court. In our county, they have you call in every day for a week and see if you are needed for jury duty. Every year, I call and get told to check the next day. At the end of the week, I'm told that my service is complete for a year. This year, I was chosen to do my "one day, one trial" duty.

It was interesting and really drove home the idea that we can choose how we respond to situations. Everyone was grumping about having to be there for 8 hours. "i have work to do." "what a waste of a day." "omg, can't we just go home?" etc etc etc After about an hour, I decided to be the "happy juror." no grumping....just happy conversation from me. It surprised me how quickly the conversation around me changed. A couple people got up and left our area (which resulted in some snarkiness from our group), but most started sharing about work, family, interests..... We shared movie critiques and book reviews and basically had a pleasant time.

I was chosen to the pool for a murder trial and, while I want to serve on a trial sometime, this month is crazy busy. The judge was questioning everyone who had written that they had conflicts. The guy before me was suppose to pick up family at the airport on Friday. He was told to call a shuttle or a cab for them. I have tickets to see "Rent" on Tuesday and would have to leave 1 1/2 hours early to make the show. The judge excused me. hahahahahahaha being a musical theatre freak does come in handy sometimes.

have you ever served on a trial? details, please......

7 comments:

  1. That is hilarious that you got excused to see "Rent". Go judge! My husband got selected last year and he loved it. He was the happy juror as well. He said the whole process was really interesting.
    I think it would be fun for a day or two, but that would be about my limit.

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  2. In thirty plus years as a registered voter, I have never even been called. There is probably a stamp on my file that says 'extremely impatient person - do not bother'.

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  3. I was called to jury duty for a sexual assault trial and was vetoed by the defense lawyer. I think I was only there for a few hours, tops. I'm glad I was vetoed, I'm not sure I would have been able to be at all impartial, under the circumstances - both the accused and the victim were my age and grew up near me, although I didn't know them personally.

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  4. I guess the judge appreciates theatre, but not travel :)

    I realize that just by saying this here, I tempt fate. But I've never been chosen for jury duty. A colleague of mine was selected a couple of years ago, and he ended up assigned to a trial that dragged on for a couple of months. He was none too pleased. Thankfully it was a financial/fraud deal...nothing that would cause nightmares.

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  5. LOTS of details here...

    http://jimsuldog.blogspot.com/2008/11/8-days-in-seat-10.html

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  6. I got called in on a date less than a week before I was supposed to move! In seattle (where I lived at the time) you have to show up for two days and they call in 30ppl at a time and once you've been called in then if you don't get selected for that jury then you're done. If you never get called in, then so long as you've sat in the room for two days (8-3) you're good to go.
    I went in and sat around all day waiting to be called up...then I sat around on the second day waiting to be called up...with only about an hour left on that second day I got called in. I was #29 of 30 potential jurors...so I sat through the questioning stuff, but honestly they would have had to reject like 18 other people before I would have been seated anyway, so I sat through it and then was released and went on home.

    I got called up one other time--3 weeks after my baby was born. I told them I'd be happy to come if they didn't mind me breastfeeding in court. They gave me a pass. LOL!

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