So last week I got pretty much the first jury summons of my life. I think I got one a few years back when I was in California, but it was one of those bring a book, show up, get dismissed jobs that were good for providing excuses as a reason to wear jeans and not have to go to work for the whole day. In fact, that may have been one of the infamous "pool days" in the old apartment complex....
Anyway, I luckily avoided having to go to jury duty while I was bouncing around Civil War battlefields earlier in the week, but I did get called in on Thursday. I wasn't sure what to expect, so I pretty much dressed for work and ended up getting stuck in this big hall with a hundred other people until my name was called for jury selection at 3:15 (after arriving at 8:30am).
Jury selection is interesting. The lawyers are probing the attendees to find out if they speak English (a surprisingly number of them don't), if they hold any grudges against the city or the defendant, etc. etc. They told us that if we were selected, we could expect the case to go for two weeks in court. I was all into learning about this process and being and court since it seemed kind of exciting, but two weeks? Uhhh, I got things to do, people (like salsa classes) !!!
Anyway, long story short, the lawyers were always bickering and we even had some "objections!" - in the freakin' jury selection phase! Isn't this supposed to be like an hour long? It ended up going for three days with each day starting at about 11:30 (we were told to be there at 10:30am) because the lawyers kept having to go to the judge to settle their differences. Today was the pinnacle - we were told to be there at 10:00am, only to wait until noon before the lawyers finally left the judge's office to come talk to us. The second lawyer finally got to start asking us her questions and five minutes in, during a question directed at me (sine I had told them that in my experience, city employees had been lazy), we got an objection from the other lawyer and then they had to go talk to the judge. So we got a two hour lunch, came back, and we were all basically told we could go home.
What a waste of three days! Thank god I didn't have to actually attend this court case, it would've been done in a month at this rate!
J. Riley, at least I didn't miss any salsa classes...
havent i taught you anything!? next time you're up for jury duty (which won't be for a while now), tell them that i am one of your best family friends and i've worked for a public defender and i told you about cases, and ive been dating a public defender who works on staten island and you are really swayed by what we say.
ReplyDeletejust fyi, man...
hey the plus side to this is that you will get paid for those 3 days. Last year it took them a week to select a jury and I got paid for all 7 days even tho I wasn't selected. But it didn't even come close to what I would have made at work. Oh well it's our judicial duty to serve, right? LOL
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