Civic Duty

For the second time in a little over a year I have been chosen for jury selection.  The first time I had the excuse of my brother-in-laws wedding and was excused but this time however I didn't really have a good reason why I could not go...so I did.

I waited in a large room with 300 other people, hoping not to be selected.  If selected, the judge said the trail would start the next day and would probably take about 3 weeks.  My reasons for not wanting to sit on the jury were totally selfish.  I didn't want to spend my birthday in court.  Murray and I haven't seen each other much this summer and I did not want to spend another three weeks apart from him.  And I really am looking forward to going back to school and I didn't know how I was going to tell work I would be missing the whole month of September.

Lucky for me, I did not get chosen. 

Actually the whole process was completely random.  Every half-hour or so they called a group of 14 people out of the room and questioned them.  If a juror did not get challenged by either defense or prosecution they were on the jury, if they were challenged, they went home and this went on and on until they had 12 jurors and 2 alternates.  My name was never called, all I had to do was stand up at role call and say 'present' and read my book in an uncomfortable chair for 7 hours.  Not too bad. 

The whole process was rather interesting.

Happy Wednesday!