On Monday 04 November 2019 I did my civic duty by serving Jury Duty. It was not my first round in the law abiding citizen rodeo and might not be my last. As with my previous experiences there were some differences.
Now if I recall correctly I had been called about 5 times previously. The first time I was called was when I was still away at College so I had to explain I was away at school That was when I was 18 or 19. Then round 2 came a few years later sometime in my early 20s? I actually got picked to be on a jury. I think it was 3 days spent. I don't recall exact details but it was a civil case that involved a traffic accident and the plaintiffs were seeking damages for some personal injuries. I seem to recall we the jury decided that the injuries were not directly caused by the accident, or were not as severe as claimed so no compensation was given. My 3rd round was shortly after the time I served and was within the grace period at the time. I think back then around late 1980s? The grace period allowing to be excused due to recent previous service, was within 7 years and it had only been 3 or 4 years from when I had served. Currently I thought it is down to 3 years or if our orientation dude was correct only down to one year now. Then time 4 my jury selection call number was higher than the jury numbers they were calling to report that particular day. My last call number 5, prior to this recently passed one, I reported and we waited and waited in the juror's lounge and waited for an hour and a half to two or three hours. They gave us a briefing that there were 3 trials awaiting juries and they were in the negotiation stage and getting close to the time for jury selection. Then about an hour or two later they came back and reported that all 3 trials had come to some kind of agreement/plea bargain and a jury was not required. We were released to go home and that was around lunch time or shortly after.
Now on to 04 NOV 19:
First before I reported I was going to do a dry run to the court house as it had been several years since I had last been there. We know how cities can change around in very short periods of time. I had a vague idea where to go but not exact. For several reasons I didn't do my dry run. On Sunday the night before my day to report I checked the directions using Map Quest and got more familiar with the exact details. Good thing I did that, because I was going to use my old portable GPS (my 2016 Ford Fusion non-hybrid version unfortunately doesn't have built in GPS) but the battery charge was very low and it wasn't staying on. It would start to power up then just power down and off. Fortunately the bulk of my route was one road, that changes names near the courthouse. I also knew the street names where the juror's parking area was and of course my summons had the courthouse address. One of the final turns I missed but was aware that I should have taken it so I made the next turn and got back on track. Also on Sunday night as required I called in the check-in number my summons instructed to call to see if my assigned juror's number was being called the next day. The recording for that had a very long instructions for how to get to the courthouse and more details of some generalities before it actually mentioned which numbers were being called in to report.
The smallish juror's parking lot was pretty much the way I had remembered it from years ago, except everything around it seemed to be different. There was also a parking garage across the street for alternate overflow parking. My call time was 8:30 AM I reached the parking lot at about a quarter of 8:00. When I checked in at the courthouse it was about 9 or 10 minutes of 8. To pass the time, I had brought with me a book (George Orwell's "
1984" which I have been currently reading for a couple of months now. I read some here and there a few pages at at time) a word search book and pen to work it, a bottle of water and a single 2 piece pack of Pop-Tarts (the Orchard Apple Cinnamon flavor I
blogged about last month, from a new second box) OH and some cough drops. It seems that coughing in the juror's lounge is a bit contagious Hehehe. Also the juror's lounge had been remodeled/renovated since my last term of service. The seats were in rows lengthwise down the room where previously it had been across the width of the room. Along the 'back" length wall was a series of about a dozen desktop computers that were wifi compatible, last time there were about 6 desktops during the early days of the internet so back then they were basically just for checking email. Now they can surf the internet heavy duty. Also previously they were in a sort of mini-room alcove now they line part of a wall.
The waiting began for the opening remarks/orientation. At about 8:40 we got an orientation introduction and were shown a video about the jury experience. That all took about 10 minutes maybe, then the real waiting began. The time of waiting around for your juror's number to be called to report to a courtroom for the selection process. So we waited and waited and waited. I switched back and forth from reading a few pages of my book to working a couple of word searches. The occasional sip of water, I couldn't eat the Pop-Tarts yet because you weren't allowed to eat in the Juror's Lounge, you could drink water, but you are not supposed to eat anything. They have a small break room off of one corner that has snack machines and a drink machine that seemed to only take quarters or credit card. I don't think it even gave change. So we wait and wait. By about 10:30 or so I was starting to think that they would tell us that all the cases had made non-jury deals and we would be dismissed early. No such luck. At about 11:20 or so they informed us that they were late with some of the morning breaks and were about to begin. It was around this time that they called us by number to receive our financial compensation ($15 Yippee). There was an option when we checked in (and at this time when they were calling us) to donate to a Juror's fund of some kind which basically meant instead of getting paid for the day, you donated what you would have gotten paid to this support fund thing. I opted for the cash out.
Ten minutes or so later sometime around 11:30 or 11:40 they started calling us for selections to the cases on that morning's docket. They started with a very large pool. They mentioned they were going to call a large number of us 125 (out of about 400 some called for the day) for a criminal case. About halfway through that calling my number was called. So I was in the lottery to sit for a criminal case. What fun (/sarcasm) My previous Jury serving was a civil case as I had mentioned way way up above somewhere. First thing they did when we got to the courtroom was to do a roll call to make sure no potential jurors were lost between the juror's lounge floor and the court room floor which was one floor up for this particular trial. The Judge introduced the cast members (Himself, the lawyers, court clerk, the bailiff and I think even the other two police officers that were in the room. Oh and also the defendant). The Judge then started talking about how the process was going to be handled and mentioned it was going to be a long day due to the vast number of potential juror's to sort through. I think it was shortly after this that we had a brief break.
When we returned we were then given some of the general details of the case. As I said it was a criminal case, an attempted murder with a firearm. There were 3 or 4 charges total If I recall. Then the judge asked some general questions we had to respond to by raising our hands and when recognized (which was sometimes hard to tell when it was you or someone behind you) give our juror number of course. These were some of the same general questions the summons survey had on it, which was supposed to help narrow down the bigger scope of things like English as a second language, if there is any physical disability that might make you ineligible to serve like poor hearing or very restricted mobility. Then around 12:25 it was lunch time and break time til 1:00 pm.
Then there were some more detailed questions and philosophical type questions and questions like if you had a personal connection to anyone in the case or potential witnesses and law officials who were mentioned as being connected to the case. For the more detailed questions the judge had to bring each individual potential juror up to the bench to ask why they had answered the question and if it would effect their ability to serve on the jury. During this process they used a sound blocking/white noise producing device that allows private conversations at the bench to be conducted without the entire courtroom hearing through the sound system. I forget the name they gave it but in short it is a white noise making device.
After that Q&A was done they got down to the nitty gritty of calling jurors up to the jury box and allowing the lawyers to see everyone. The process is fairly simple but with such a large number of potential jurors the process takes a lot of time. More so than a civil trial selection does, partly due to more detailed questioning. So they would call a few jurors up to start filling the jury box and the lawyers would then have to decide to either keep the juror or to excuse them. NO reason is needed for dismissal. Either they would say something like "keep the juror", "seat and swear in the juror", or "thank and excuse the juror" or similar sayings. Each side was usually consistent with their phrasing of the two "commands".
After a few minutes of excusing some of the jurors that were brought into the jury box and the defense dismissing quite a few of them a jury of 12 jurors plus 2 alternate jurors were picked. I was not called to the box. The final jury was mostly women I think there might have been one or two men on the jury I think the alternates were women. Of the women most were non-white. Even though middle-aged white males were usually excused immediately there was a guy who looked like Jerry Garcia who I think made the final jury as the one or two males on the jury.
They released those of us who were not picked and it was somewhere between 5 to 10 before 5:00 pm. I then made my way to the juror's parking lot where I had been parked all day. The juror's lot is free the garage across the street is paid parking, but juror's could get a validation pass if they had to park there. Anyway I sat in my car for a good 10 to 15 minutes before I even turned on my car to wait from the traffic from the parking lot to disperse so I wouldn't waste time sitting idol with the engine running and not moving at all.
