12 Angry Men and a Baby

Now that is a movie I'd like to see!

Happy Friday!  Didn’t know what to write this week so I thought I’d talk about how jury duty went (since I was oh so interested in learning how it works for “writing research purposes”).

What I was hoping for...

So, I called in Saturday as my summons told me and was asked to report Monday (which was a big relief).  I didn’t want to wait and wait and phone each day only to get called in Friday and have to be on hold for another week.

When I arrived Monday morning, the first thing I noticed was that almost everyone was in jeans.  I looked up what to wear online beforehand and while jeans weren’t a specific no no the court's website had stressed “business casual” and “no t-shirts” and yeah, I wore slacks instead of jeans which I would have preferred…now I know better.  So anyway, I show up, wait a couple hours, read, take a coffee break, and finally get called in a group of 50 to go to a courtroom. 

Outside the courtroom we are informed the case we’re prospective jurors for will last…wait for it…3 weeks.  There is an audible groan throughout the crowd.  I felt a little anxious as well.  I wanted jury duty, but I didn’t want THAT much jury duty.  Oh well, nothing could be done now.  The court employee passed out forms where people could write essays about all their legitimate excuses to not serve for 3 weeks (I didn’t fill one out, no good excuses).  

Then, we were asked to sit in the court (WAY smaller than it looks on TV) where we all found out...we weren’t going to be selected that day.  Instead, the lawyers and judge were just going to figure out who COULDN’T serve (who had the best excuses).  They collected everyone’s essay forms to be read and sorted, but before all that would happen, all of us without excuses (like 10 of us) got dismissed to come back mid week where we’d sit with everyone who didn’t have a good enough excuse to get out of it.  And….that was it!  I was dismissed to go and wait until Wednesday while all the people with excuses had to sweat it out while their essays were read and they were questioned by the judge and what not.  But, I didn’t see any of this because I was GONE.

What it was really like.  Just kidding, that would have been awesome!

And then…something funny happened.  The next moring I got a call.  The case had settled.  No more case.  I was free.  My jury duty was completed.  I have to admit I felt a little sad.  I went from 3 weeks to nada like that.  Oh well, no jury duty means more time to WRITE (which I didn’t do much of Monday).  The thing that struck me as funniest about the whole experience was that the people with the most reasons NOT to be there (the ones with excuses) had to spend the most time there having their essays read, being questioned, etc. and if they were dismissed from that case, they likely had to go BACK to the waiting room to be placed at another court while people like me got off scott free.

So yeah, jury duty…not quite what I’d expected.  I’m sure the next time I get called I’ll be working a job with insane hours and won’t want to serve/it will be really inconvenient to serve and then I WILL get placed on a 3 week long case.