04 May 2011

Jury duty

I finished up my first ever tour of jury duty.  You always hear about jury duty and how absolutely horrible it is.  It isn't though. 

Yeah, you don't get paid much.  Kansas pays ten dollars a day, plus two dollars for meal stipend, plus mileage.  So, it's a losing effort if you go in thinking you'll make some bank off of your state.  Yeah, the first day is really long and boring.  I brought a book and the ipod and it went by quicker than I thought it would.  Some even brought laptops to do some work.  I would equate the jury assembly room to an airplane.  You are stuck next to someone you don't know and unless you get a talker, you keep to yourself.  Luckily, I was not next to a talker.  I hate talkers.  Hate is a strong word, but I have a strong feelings about it.

The assembly room was boring and very quiet.  After being selected for a jury pool, we went up to a court room and were interviewed by the defense attorney and district attorney.  It was a little intimidating.  It wasn't like they asked extremely embarrassing questions or anything like that, but it was monotonous.  Imagine hearing the same question asked twenty four times.  Not an exciting question, but a question like 'what is your living situation, where do you work, have you ever served on a jury.'.  BOOOOOORING!  After getting the information, they started to ask questions that would weed out anyone that they deemed to have a prejudice thought or answered a question that they did not approve of.  That took four hours.  Four.  Hours.  With one little break in between.

That was the rest of the first day.  And they didn't even finish up the jury selection.  That went on into the second day, but it was not for very long.  Second day was hearing the testimonies and the start of deliberation.  Testimonies went on for six hours and we were able to start deliberation, but did not get very far.  It was difficult to just sit and listen and not be able to discuss anything with the rest of the jurors.  I think we all felt that because the minute we got into the jury room, there were about three conversations going on and nothing really happened.  

Today was the last day of the trial, and it didn't last all day.  Luckily.  We were able to deliberate when we were all present and we started around nine fifteen.  The deliberation was much more calm and organized with people who thought the defendant was guilty able to present their arguments to those who thought he was not guilty.  It was organized, it was calm, and for the most part, it was one conversation.  We deliberated for close about an hour and a half and came to the conclusion that the defendant was not guilty because of lack of evidence.

Overall, it was an experience that was enjoyable.  Well, I think that enjoyable isn't the right word.  Tolerable is a better word.  Do not look at like an inconvenience.  If you don't want to participate, and you get called, go in there and answer the questions they ask as horribly as possible.  And there were some people like that.  The way that they answered some of the questions, I just knew (and I'm sure the lawyers did too) that they were trying to get out of being there.  Listen, it's not a big deal.  It's an experience.  An experience that you'll have to do eventually and will have a year off from that.

My only advice is when they ask the jury to select a head juror.  Everyone in the room kept saying that they didn't want to do it, so I took the reins.  Creepy, right?  Me in control of something.  I was determined to keep everyone in line the last day when it came to deliberation.  It drove me nuts when everyone was talking.  Keep control of the conversations and be a dick.  When they got off topic, I brought them all back with this great phrase I have picked up from work.  'That doesn't matter, let's focus on what is important.'  It shut everyone up and got us back on topic.   

No comments:

Post a Comment