Jury Duty

I have been on call twice a week for the month of April for jury duty in the city where I live. Up until this week, my group had not yet been needed. Monday evening, I called and found out that my group had been called to report for duty Tuesday morning. I had planned on taking Bailey to Kindergarden registration that morning, but I hoped that I would be done in time to catch the evening session. I could have registered her any time, but the school lets the kids ride a school bus and visit the classrooms if you come on the scheduled day.

So, off I went to the courthouse. The jurors that reported that day were divided into two groups. Our group of 15 ended up waiting about 2 hours before we were ushered off to one court room. The other group had gone to another court room about an hour before. Once there, we had to at least another 45 minutes in a back room before we went back into the court room. Then we had to answer questions from the lawyers so they could decide which of us to keep and which to send home. I of course, got select to stay. By that time, it was 12:30 so the judge called a recess for lunch. We had to be back at 1:45. Opening statements finally started at 2:00. We already knew that time point that the trial was not going to last only one day. At 5:00, the judged again called a recess until 9:00am Thursday.

I picked Bailey up at her preschool around 5:15, picked Mallory and her boyfriend up at his house, ran by the house to get the papers I needed for the registration at school and dropped Mallory and Adam off at the baseball field to watch Joseph's game. Bailey and I made it to the school just a few minutes after the session started and she got to ride the bus. She said that it was big and very bouncy.

We got started around 10:00 that day and recessed for lunch at 12:15. Sensing many impending motions after lunch, we were instructed to take a long lunch break and return at 2:00. We waited around again and finally got back into the court room at 3:00. We were starting to think that we'd be back for another day, when the defense finally rested and both lawyers made their closing statements. We went back to deliberate a little after 4:00 and came back with our decision around 5:20. I had an interesting time, but the case we were stuck listening too was very boring.

It took living here 13 years before I got called the first time and no one is called more than once every three years, so it will be interesting to see when I get called again.