I’m sure everybody has gotten a jury summons. I’ve received many. I used to think I got them annually like clockwork for a while. Every time before this, either there was not a need for a jury, so I was off the hook, or even the last few times when they needed juries and I had to travel to the courthouse, they satisfied the need before they got to me, so I got to go home. Not this time. I had already postponed once because when I got the summons last fall it was during a planned trip. This time the summons came and I had to go in, and when I did, I was picked to go up to the courtroom and got stuck in the jury box right off the bat … and I never got kicked out.
I ended up serving on a jury for a criminal trial. Luckily it was a very short trial. The jury selection was actually the longest part of the process lasting about 1 1/2 days. The trial was about a day, then we deliberated about a day. Actually we started deliberating on Friday afternoon for about an hour and a half before breaking for a three day weekend. When we came in Tuesday morning, we found one of the jurors had to be replaced by an alternate, so we had to start deliberating from scratch. Overall, it took four full days.
I found the whole process to be quite interesting. The jury selection was the most interesting to me hearing the judge both question the jurors at the same time asking questions that helped educate the jury pool as to what the role of the jury was. I was also surprised (but I guess I shouldn’t have been) at some of the politically-based views expressed by some of the potential jurors who were ultimately excused in one way or another. The trial was undramatic, but interestingly featured a lot of evidence from people’s home security video cameras. I guess I should do a little research into getting one of those. Although the jurors behaved quite respectively and civil and seemed to be trying to do their duty, I found the deliberations to be quite stressful in the end as we were deciding a serious matter. I was actually surprised that we reached a verdict and didn’t end up hung. I guess I’m glad I finally got to participate in this important civil process, but I also hope I don’t get picked to be on a jury again.