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kitanziA month or so ago I got a summons to Jury Duty, the first I've ever gotten in any state. So I dutifully hauled myself out of bed and to the Atlanta court bright and early yesterday morning to do my Duty. It turned out to be a lot of hurryup-and-wait, but it had some very interesting aspects, too. Certainly Jury Duty makes for some fascinating people watching. By the nature of the thing you have a very wide cross-section of society, all up damn early to haul themselves down to the court by quarter past eight.
I turned out to have been summoned for Superior court. After signing in, getting an orientation film and hanging around for a while in the Juror Assembly room my name was called out as one of 60 for a criminal trial, so we all straggled off to our assigned court to find out what was what. Again, a lot of hurryup-and-wait, as everyone got assigned numbers and seated according to them, then the judge and lawyers made some general speeches about what was expected of all of us and introducing themselves and the defendant, and informed us that this would be a murder trial and was tentatively projected to take about 4 days. Anyone who felt they would suffer undue hardship by being required to serve on the jury under those circumstances was invited to discuss it in the back room with the judge. That killed another hour or so, then they put up a list of statutory questions (things like what is your name and occupation, do you or anyone in your family have law enforcement experience, have you or anyone in your family been a victim of a violent crime, have you served on a jury before and was there a verdict, etc). We were brought from the five benches in the back of the court room over to the jury box a row at a time, and each was asked to stand up in turn and answer the questions.
That killed a good while, and after that it was time for lunch. Ug, cafteria food - you know it's a bad sign when the most appetizing option is the chicken salad sandwich! After we all came back to the benches in the court, and each lawyer got a turn to ask a series of general questions, for which we were to each hold up our assigned number if we were answering yes. They noted the answers, of course, and once that was done it was time to again file up to the jury box row by row and each be interviewed by both sides in detail on our answers so the lawyers could ask what violent crime you might have encountered, and what attitude you might have to the police after that, for instance. There were some interesting hints on the case in what was asked, and the defense lawyer objected to several of the state's questions. This dragged on for the rest of the afternoon, and would have been deadly boring if not for the interesting bits of people's lives that came out that way. We had college students and stay at home moms, retired marines and paralegals, real estate lawyers and security guards and all sorts of things. We had one man who said he used to own his own store and had been robbed too many times to be able to say how many police reports he'd made. We had one juror who recognized the attorney for the state from Court TV. *G* I was rather interested that three college student (or recently graduated, in one case) suggested they would not be suitable jurors since they had ADD. In each case, I believe they were asked what their GPA was, and all said 3.5 or better, in things like engineering. The judge seemed to think this indicated sufficient focus to be able to adequately pay attention to a trial!
This went on and on and on... my turn was thankfully brief. Finally it came to quarter past five and we were only a little over halfway through everyone! The judge told the next four people to come up for interviews, then summarily told all the remaining folks thank you but go ahead home, you are done. They took off like they were being released from prison themselves, and were afraid he'd change his mind! Once those last four were done, the judge and attorneys briefly conferred, then told four or five people that they were excused for cause (the causes were not specified) but since the judge wanted the attorneys to have the night to decide which jurors they wanted the rest of us would all have to come back the NEXT morning to find out who was selected and who was not! There was considerable muttering at that, but no way to argue with the judge so we all left for the day rather disgruntled.
I got home almost 13 hours after I'd left that morning, and ACat and I went to a team building dinner my workplace was sponsoring - a VERY delicious Brazilian grill, Fire of Brazil. SOOOO good! So we went and stuffed and I told my supervisor that I'd be out again for part two of the same thing.
So this morning I hauled my ass out of bed not quite as early and got myself to the court in good time again. (Absurdly early, actually, both days because I didn't know how much time to allow and I had visions of being held in contempt of court if I was late!) The judge did say we only had a half hour to an hour left for jury selection - the reason for the overnight continuation was to let the attorneys have time to make their choices. There was a lot of discontent at that, but the forty or so of us that were left all showed up and sat quietly on the benches while the attorneys apparently passed a clipboard back and forth crossing off names. Eventually, the clerk of the court announced to the judge that they were done, and read off fourteen names for twelve jurors and two alternates. Once the names had been read off, the rest of us (including me!) were briskly thanked for doing our civic duty and invited to leave which we all did with varying degrees of enthusiasm. Several people seemed disappointed, but overall most were glad to be going home to get on with whatever they would normally be doing. I came home and enjoyed the rest of my day off, and tomorrow it's back to work with me to deal with amendments and taxes and the remodeling of our floor of the building!
It has certainly been interesting and I'm rather glad I was called. Even so, I'm also glad this exempts me for the rest of this term, and all of next. (For this court, at any rate - there are four others I can be called for, I found out! A most educational experience, this.)
I turned out to have been summoned for Superior court. After signing in, getting an orientation film and hanging around for a while in the Juror Assembly room my name was called out as one of 60 for a criminal trial, so we all straggled off to our assigned court to find out what was what. Again, a lot of hurryup-and-wait, as everyone got assigned numbers and seated according to them, then the judge and lawyers made some general speeches about what was expected of all of us and introducing themselves and the defendant, and informed us that this would be a murder trial and was tentatively projected to take about 4 days. Anyone who felt they would suffer undue hardship by being required to serve on the jury under those circumstances was invited to discuss it in the back room with the judge. That killed another hour or so, then they put up a list of statutory questions (things like what is your name and occupation, do you or anyone in your family have law enforcement experience, have you or anyone in your family been a victim of a violent crime, have you served on a jury before and was there a verdict, etc). We were brought from the five benches in the back of the court room over to the jury box a row at a time, and each was asked to stand up in turn and answer the questions.
That killed a good while, and after that it was time for lunch. Ug, cafteria food - you know it's a bad sign when the most appetizing option is the chicken salad sandwich! After we all came back to the benches in the court, and each lawyer got a turn to ask a series of general questions, for which we were to each hold up our assigned number if we were answering yes. They noted the answers, of course, and once that was done it was time to again file up to the jury box row by row and each be interviewed by both sides in detail on our answers so the lawyers could ask what violent crime you might have encountered, and what attitude you might have to the police after that, for instance. There were some interesting hints on the case in what was asked, and the defense lawyer objected to several of the state's questions. This dragged on for the rest of the afternoon, and would have been deadly boring if not for the interesting bits of people's lives that came out that way. We had college students and stay at home moms, retired marines and paralegals, real estate lawyers and security guards and all sorts of things. We had one man who said he used to own his own store and had been robbed too many times to be able to say how many police reports he'd made. We had one juror who recognized the attorney for the state from Court TV. *G* I was rather interested that three college student (or recently graduated, in one case) suggested they would not be suitable jurors since they had ADD. In each case, I believe they were asked what their GPA was, and all said 3.5 or better, in things like engineering. The judge seemed to think this indicated sufficient focus to be able to adequately pay attention to a trial!
This went on and on and on... my turn was thankfully brief. Finally it came to quarter past five and we were only a little over halfway through everyone! The judge told the next four people to come up for interviews, then summarily told all the remaining folks thank you but go ahead home, you are done. They took off like they were being released from prison themselves, and were afraid he'd change his mind! Once those last four were done, the judge and attorneys briefly conferred, then told four or five people that they were excused for cause (the causes were not specified) but since the judge wanted the attorneys to have the night to decide which jurors they wanted the rest of us would all have to come back the NEXT morning to find out who was selected and who was not! There was considerable muttering at that, but no way to argue with the judge so we all left for the day rather disgruntled.
I got home almost 13 hours after I'd left that morning, and ACat and I went to a team building dinner my workplace was sponsoring - a VERY delicious Brazilian grill, Fire of Brazil. SOOOO good! So we went and stuffed and I told my supervisor that I'd be out again for part two of the same thing.
So this morning I hauled my ass out of bed not quite as early and got myself to the court in good time again. (Absurdly early, actually, both days because I didn't know how much time to allow and I had visions of being held in contempt of court if I was late!) The judge did say we only had a half hour to an hour left for jury selection - the reason for the overnight continuation was to let the attorneys have time to make their choices. There was a lot of discontent at that, but the forty or so of us that were left all showed up and sat quietly on the benches while the attorneys apparently passed a clipboard back and forth crossing off names. Eventually, the clerk of the court announced to the judge that they were done, and read off fourteen names for twelve jurors and two alternates. Once the names had been read off, the rest of us (including me!) were briskly thanked for doing our civic duty and invited to leave which we all did with varying degrees of enthusiasm. Several people seemed disappointed, but overall most were glad to be going home to get on with whatever they would normally be doing. I came home and enjoyed the rest of my day off, and tomorrow it's back to work with me to deal with amendments and taxes and the remodeling of our floor of the building!
It has certainly been interesting and I'm rather glad I was called. Even so, I'm also glad this exempts me for the rest of this term, and all of next. (For this court, at any rate - there are four others I can be called for, I found out! A most educational experience, this.)
