Jury Duty

I did my civic duty last week and went downtown for jury duty. I figured that if I was going to do my civic duty that I should really commit to the process. After being sworn in, I was in the third group of jurors that were escorted to the criminal court house. I was pretty excited that I had a chance to hear a criminal case and I thought it would be really interesting to hear what sort of questions the attorneys had. The bailiff lined us up outside of Courtroom 1 and put us in juror number order to make sure that no one got lost on the short walk to the courthouse.

After the bailiff verified that he had all of his jurors he dismissed us for one hour to come back for the voir dire (the attorneys were not ready for us). We were waiting for the elevator to go downstairs to the cafeteria when the bailiff called us back. He said we got lucky -- which I thought meant that the lawyers were ready to pick the panel early, but what the bailiff really meant was that the case was settled and we were dismissed. I was back at my desk at work before 10:30 a.m. It was nice to be able to get back to work, but I honestly, I was a bit disappointed that I was not able to really perform my civic duty. My last jury summons before this was over 6 years ago when I was still in school (and thus did not have to serve) ... so if it takes them 6 more years to call me again, I won't be doing my civic duty any time soon. At least there was good people watching ...