Entries (RSS)The other day, Debra and I were talking about how she got pulled for jury duty, which caused me to reflect on my own experience with civic duty. I got pulled for jury duty in 2004, a couple months after Mr. B and I first started dating. I called up on Sunday night and found out I had to report Monday morning. We started the morning watching a video, then we got to keep ourselves entertained for a couple hours. Late morning, I got pulled in a group to see about being on a jury. I was towards the end of the group, and they got everyone they needed pretty quickly, so I returned to the waiting room. The rest of the day was pretty boring, and we didn’t have to go in on Tuesday.
On Wednesday, we had to report again, but it was a mostly boring day. Towards the end of the day, they said they were just waiting to see if one last case was going to go to trial and they’d let us go. A few minutes later, close to 3:30 or 4, they pulled a bunch of people for that case, and I got picked again towards the end of the group. That afternoon, they eliminated a few people and let us go home. We had to report again first thing Thursday morning while they continued to eliminate people. It was a domestic battery case, and so many people had dealt with abuse in one form or another, we went through the entire set of people pulled and they barely ended up with the 12 jurors and 1 alternate. Yup, I got to be on the jury. They took us into the jury room, took our cell phones and such, and then we started the trial. We were only about halfway through by the end of the day, so they gave us back our stuff and instructed us that we were not to discuss the case.
As I was leaving the court house, I called Mr. B and asked if he wanted to go out that night because I needed a drink. So we went to dinner, and I had a few drinks and got a little buzzed. I went back on Friday morning, and they took us back to the juror room, took away our cell phones again, and we proceeded with the case. The case itself finished mid-afternoon, and we deliberated for a while. I think we were done by about 3:30-4, and though I could have stopped in at work and caught up on e-mail from being out most the week, I just wasn’t in any mood. The case had bothered me. Again, I called Mr. B to see if he wanted to go out and drink that night. I’m really not much of a drinker, so drinking two nights in a row is quite rare for me. I’m not cut out for dealing with that sorta thing. I hope it’s a good long while before I get pulled for jury duty again.
