Jury Duty Part II April 6th

Well it was a really interesting morning. I left early because I was afraid of post-long weekend traffic. I didn't need to be. I figured it would take me about an hour to an hour and a half to get to the parking at city hall (next to the courthouse). Surprisingly enough it only took me 35 minutes. So I arrived at 7:35 for a 9:00 start time for jury selection.

Unfortunately I was feeling pretty under the weather. I'm back to my old tricks (pre-dialysis days) where I carry plastic garbage bags around if I need to toss my cookies unexpectedly. So I bought an apple juice (always settles my tummy) and popped more immodium (love that drug). And I waited. And waited. And waited. I was able to check in early and was told to come back at 9:45. By 10 am the court officers were explaining the procedures of how we will be chosen and what the cases were roughly. 2 were civil and would take about 10 days (starting as soon as jury selection was completed) and 2 were criminal (one involving sexual assault and confinement) which would take about 3 - 5 weeks. Since there were about 150 people in the room, there were a lot of questions so that took quite a while.

We were then taken into the courtroom and the lottery began. The judge was nice and thorough and named the plaintiffs, defendants, witnesses, and counsels to ensure that there would be no bias or knowledge of the cases. It was really cool too because our system is still British based. No wigs, but formal black robes and white ties. The civil trials require 6 jurors and the names were called and they were then asked if there were reasons they could not serve. After challenges a jury for the car accident was selected. It took about 40 minutes. Those folks went off to their jury room and would begin hearing the case later. We then had to wait for the next judge. This guy was a bit different and for that I am extremely grateful. He went through the speech about citizenship requirements etc, but then asked the entire crowd who had reasons that they couldn't serve. He basically let everyone who wanted out to state their case and in most cases allowed them to leave. There were a couple of university students (finals start on Monday) a man with prostate cancer, and then I made my case for my transplants and current illness. He allowed me to go right away. Yeah! The selection for the criminal juries (12 folks) would have taken all day and people not chosen were to come back on Monday for further possible selection as well. I was excused from that too.

I really wanted to serve, but I'm just not reliable enough right now. I will be put back into the potential pool and could get called again over the next 3 years. Maybe I'll get called again when I'm better. In the meantime, I got a good look at the process and was pretty impressed. It was taken seriously, but was also very humane.