Jury duty

Today I did what may be considered to be the most dreaded service as a citizen…jury duty. It was a long day of waiting. I arrived at the county courthouse at 8 AM this morning, filled out a questionaire and waited. There were many people who were present for jury duty, over 200. There was a video that we had to watch that described the process of being a juror. No, I did not fall asleep during the video.

After the video there was more waiting. I waited until 11:15 AM and was told to go to lunch. Returned at 11:45 and waited some more. I was finally called to go to a courtroom with 28 others.

I was one of the first 14 to be questioned by the lawyers. Each lawyer had 30 minutes to question the jury to make sure that nobody had any issues serving as a juror. After my group, the second group was questioned. More waiting.

At 3 PM I found out that I was selected as a juror. I was told that I would be sitting as a juror until Wednesday. All the selected jurors were sent to the jury deliberation room. Guess what we all did. We waited! This lasted until 5 PM, then the judge came in to tell us that we are free to go and we will not need to serve as jurors. The case was settled out of court.

If you ever get called for jury duty I have some advice. Bring a book and be patient! It was a waiting game which I did a lot of reading and even listened to my iPod. It was an long day and was the first time that I had been selected for jury duty. I was relieved that I did not have to be a juror, but on the other hand I knew it would have been an interesting experience.

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