Jury Duty

I got the questionnaire sometime this past summer, so when I got a letter from the court, I wasn't really surprised. Jury duty - call the message line the night before to confirm which groups need to report. I called, yep, gotta show up.

The jury pool is told to report by 8:15 a.m. Check-in is the scanning of the bar code on the letter. We validated our parking receipts and waited for the 9:00 orientation video. We waited with novels, textbooks, laptops, crosswords, Sudoku. We watched the video, we were called to a courtroom upstairs.

While we waited outside the courtroom, some people walked by talking loudly. Turns out they were talking about the case we were to hear. So, back we went to the jury holding area. After being reassigned to a different case, we went back upstairs to the courtrooms. By this time it was 11:00.

Anyone familiar with Law and Order knows that weeding the jury down to the proper number is the next step. Voir dire is the term for questioning the jury. Questions had to do with issues like personal connections to law enforcement officials or people with alcohol problems. I was among the 12 people actually seated on the jury. The remainder of the jury pool left the courtroom and the lawyers began to present their information. The defendant was represented by a public defender, the state was represented by a single prosecutor.

Throughout the remainder of Tuesday, the jury listened, went back to the deliberation room while the lawyers spoke with the judge about various motions, had lunch, listened a little more, waited in the deliberation room for another hour and eventually was told to return Wednesday morning for closing statements and deliberation. Wednesday's activities started at 10:15 with the closing statements, instructions to the jury and the election of a foreman. Then... the power went out at the courthouse! After another hour of waiting, we were told to return on Thursday morning.

My last day of jury duty was the most difficult. Not only were we to decide guilty or not, we were to decide the penalty. The twelve of us actually worked very well together. There was a mutual sense of respect in that windowless room. And, there was an overwhelming sense of respect for the judicial system. We did find the defendant guilty. The penalty phase was a bit more difficult. I was amazed that as much as we all wanted to get back to our "normal" lives, we all wanted to carefully consider our decision and were willing to take the amount of time we needed to reach a unanimous decision. Not one person left that room unchanged by the experience of sending a person to prison for a year.

I really don't want to be on a jury again. But neither will I avoid serving if I'm called. I sure hope any other jury I serve on will be as good a working group as this one was.