jury duty part 1 - The beginning...

I got a jury notice in the mail - but it was somewhat delayed since it was sent to my old address. I read it, noted the date and set it aside. The Saturday before I was on call - I got another notice since I hadn't filled out the form and returned it properly. I was a little worried about that, but figured I'd wing it. Sunday evening I called and checked the website for jury duty - and my group wasn't needed. The recording was a little too strident for my tastes and talked down to us a little bit, but at least it was clear.

Monday evening was a different story - my group was on call and I was to report to the courthouse on Tuesday morning. I tried to get things ready for my co-workers as much as I could for my absence and found out later that I prevented some problems with my preparedness. Which was cool - and a little ironic since I was really not prepared for jury duty. I got to the courthouse very early and though I was a little worried about my paperwork, there was no problem. I did a little folding while I waited and watched the room fill up. After a bit, the woman in charge of the area gave a little speech (she was the same one that did the voice recording) and has us watch part of a video - but only part since a bailiff came in and called a large group to go with her. A little more video and then another group was called for selection with a different bailiff - and I was #18. They were very insistent that we remember our number - but of course someone forgot it when it was needed later.

We went up several flights of stairs (some took the elevator if they couldn't handle the stairs) and waited for a bit in the jury room. We were then lined up by number and brought into the court room. 12 people went in the jury box and the rest of us sat towards the back.

Both sides asked a bunch of general questions, then based on those, they asked a few specific questions of people. One guy had an answer for pretty much every question - it was almost a given that he would be removed. Run ins with the law, medical and childcare, and relation to another judge. A few more got removed for other reasons - usually child care - but a few got removed and we later wondered why. They started to winnow down the jury and they pulled people out and then replaced them in order of the extras. I was #18 and I watched as they cleared out enough people to need me - reassigned to #9. Once the removals were done they had an extra person in reserve and that was it. We were a jury.

But a jury that didn't get to do anything right away. There was a scheduling conflict and we broke for the day at 12:00. We did get to hear the opening statements - and the comments by the defense prompted the prosecutor's office to object a couple times, so, that was kinda cool. They even did a sidebar - it was like a real court!

I stopped into work for a bit, then went home. I still did some work from home so I wouldn't get too far behind - but there were some things that I just couldn't do unless I was at work.

So, that was day one and I was hoping it would go quickly from there on out.