All rise for the Jury

Yep, jury duty for me this past Friday. Now call me crazy, but I really enjoyed myself. I know most people try their hardest to get out of jury duty, but I was kind of hoping I'd get to be assigned to the case, which I was.

To start, all 19 potential jurors arrived at the courthouse at 8:30 and were seated in a tiny little room and had to watch a 'here's-what-jury-duty-is-all-about-and-remember-it's-your-civic-duty' video. Then we filled out a profiling questionnaire and got paid $18.50 for our time. After a while of sitting around and waiting they brought us down to the courtroom for jury selection. The judge told us the case was a criminal case involving DWI. She then proceeded to ask all potential jurors a variety of questions to determine any prejudices we might have had that would influence our decision to judge the case fairly. From there, both the plaintiff and the defense lawyers took turns eliminating jurors until they were left with four. Those final four were called to sit up in the jury box, myself included. We got sworn in, which didn't involve putting our hand on the bible, which surprised me. We just had to raise our right hand and attest that we would judge fairly. I was chosen along with an older man, and older woman (both teachers), and another younger guy - also a teacher. One thing I found interesting is that every time the jury came into or left the courtroom, everyone present would stand, out of respect. After all, the jurors are the ones who decide the outcome of any case. Cool, huh?

By that point it was 12:30 and we broke for an hour lunch and then came back and heard the case. It was really interesting listening to the calling and questioning of witnesses, but my favorite part was when one of the lawyers would stand up and yell, "objection, your honor!" Then all the lawyers would approach the bench and they would make the speakers play a static sound so we couldn't hear the conversation.

We got to have a few breaks here and there, but when we were breaking the bailiff led us up to the jury room (stocked with sodas and snacks) and locked us in there. As jurors, until the case is over we are not allowed to discuss with each other any of the details of the case, and we also are not allowed to converse with anyone else who is a part of the case (the judge, lawyers, etc.) which is why they keep us isolated. We even had to wear 'juror' badges around all day so people from the courtroom knew they couldn't talk to us - even when we went to Burger King for lunch we had to keep them visible.

By about 6:45 we'd heard the closing arguments and they took our dinner orders and we got to go back up to the jury room to deliberate. We talked over all the facts for about forty minutes, and came to our conclusion. This is another part I found very interesting; we found the defendant 'not guilty'. I think we all wished we could have called him 'guilty,' but legally we had to assume that he was innocent unless proved guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Due to the lack of conclusive evidence that he was over the legal limit, and since we didn't have enough facts to prove otherwise, we had to declare him not guilty. I can now understand why people get away with a lot of things they shouldn't, because of how the laws are set into place. However, we have to remember that if we ever have to stand trial for something we didn't do, we are lucky to be given the benefit of the doubt right from the start.

All in all, this was a great learning experience that I'm glad I got to be a part of. Having said that, I just got another notice in the mail this Saturday that I am called to be a potential juror for a Federal case at the start of March. We'll see what happens with this one, should be exciting!