Jury Duty: Part 1

I had to report for jury duty this week. I ended up getting picked for a case but before that even happened I spent all of Monday just waiting.

Jury duty is all about waiting. It's a wonder that anything gets accomplished in our justice system! I know things get accomplished but it seems like someone needs to come in there and speed up the process.

So we showed up at 8am and for the first hour we waited. There were a ton of people. 32 were moved to different room and I assume put on a case because I saw a few of them during our case in the other jury room.

The rest of us waited for another hour and 32 other people were given numbers and told to report back at 1:30pm that day (this was at 9:30am).

More waiting and then the rest of us, 70 people I think, were given a number and told to also come back at 1:30pm. So I came home, hung out with Tinkerbell, had lunch and then went back.

We were separated into our groups. 1 of 70 people and 1 of 32. Then us 70 were taken down to the courtroom for jury selection. I was number 10 so I was already in the jury box. The judge questioned us and asked if anyone had any obligations preventing them from serving. After that we had to go around and he asked if anyone recognized anyone in the courtroom and if that made them unable to be neutral they were dismissed. More people were questioned based on a queestionaire that we filled out earlier and finally the lawyers were allowed to question us aobut how we would handle the case.

They dismissed 3 additional people and once those were replaced there we were. 13 of us in the jury box selected for the trial. We had 13 in case we lost one along the way for one reason or another.

Up next is Part 2: The Trial.