Jury Duty

I had it.

That's the news! Bye!

Just kidding. I totally had Jury Duty today. Everyone is always griping and trying to get out of it, so maybe I'm missing something. I had a total blast!!

It was a bummer to have to get the children up and ready so early and shovel them off on someone else, plus it was a bummer to have to drive through the construction site at Parker and Arapahoe Roads. That was the worst part of the whole thing, besides the intense coffee stench in the Jury Waiting Room. I deliberately didn't take anything extra into the courthouse, so I breezed through security. I thought it was funny that knitting needles and crochet hooks are specifically forbidden, but then they freely hand out pens, which can not only poke people, but can also give you an accidental tatto if you get poked just so. Plus, like I'm going to commit "A Time to Kill" by poking someone to death with a tiny knitting needle 2 mm in circumference, right there in the courthouse with all those officers of the peace around. I brought a book instead of knitting.

It's all really well labeled for Jurors. You just go in the line, which moves quickly. The employees are way nicer than the DMV people. After check-in, you just wait until your name is called. There were six jury trials today, with 65 potential jurors for each, so there was a large crowd of us. They asked us several times to scootch in and let the late-comers have the empty seats, but my main point is, a) I have crowd-a-phobia, so there's no way I'm deliberately scrunching right up next to a total stranger, and b) the latecomers can come right into the aisle and sit in the empty chairs if they want to sit down so bad. Then it was just a bunch of reading and waiting. I closed my book every time they would call jurors for a trial; my name was finally called for the fourth trial, the civil trial. The others were criminal.

The part that was really cool was when we went up to the courtroom. I was juror #9 for our trial and they seat you by number, so I was in the second row in the jury box. I got a big comfy chair. I expected the courtroom to be sterile, modern, and ugly, but there was lots of wood paneling and it was fairly respectable. Plus on our way up, I made myself laugh by doing that "gun-gungggg" noise from Law and Order. There were people "Yessir-ing" the judge. The case turned out to be about two people suing each other about a commercial property mortgage foreclosure. I was so proud of myself, because when they read the complaints back and forth, I was unable to come to a snap judgement about who was right and who was wrong. I was ready to make a fair and impartial decision based on the prepoderance of evidence.

They only needed 6 jurors, though. Only the popular potential jurors got picked...so you can guess why I'm at home blogging about this now. I stopped for lunch in the courthouse cafeteria because, When am I ever going to be in there again? They start the trial right then, the instant they release all the unnecessary extra jurors. They took a lunch break pretty soon after that; I heard one of the defendants and his lawyer talking behind me on my way out to the parking lot. He was saying how there were already too many theatrics from the other counsel and how the judge seemed tired of it already. I agreed, actually. The other lawyer was hamming it up just in juror selection, trying to influence us to his point of view.

Anyway, I'll gladly serve on a jury in the future. It was a cool experience and everyone should stop grousing about it and be thankful they live in a country where you can get a fair trial, for cryin' out loud in the night!