May It Please the Court

Okay, I can now mention what I've been up to --or what I was supposed to be up to-- this past week.

I was selected for two weeks of Jury Duty.

In the US, all adult citizens who are active voters are thrown into a potential pool of jurors, and if your name comes up, you spend anywhere from two to four (or more!) weeks in jury duty. 

There's several types of jury duty, from the two main types at the county level as well as the special selections for major cases and those from the Federal courthouse. (If your city has a Federal District courthouse, that is.) At the County level, there's Grand Jury, which you are a member of for about four weeks at minimum reviewing criminal cases as to whether there's enough evidence to try the accused, and Petit Jury, which covers actual criminal and civil trials.

Over the years, I've been selected for Jury Duty three previous times: Petit Jury in the mid 90s, Federal District Court in the mid-00s, and as part of a huge pool of potential jurors (200+ people) for a First Degree Murder case in the mid-10s. For that first round of Petit Jury, I was an alternate juror on a criminal case and then a juror on a civil case. I was slotted to show up as a potential juror for a Federal case, but the parties settled at some obnoxious hour of the night (I think it was 2 AM when I received the phone call that my services were no longer required). For the Murder One charge*, my stance on capital punishment caused my dismissal from the juror pool. Before you say "oh, that's nice, just say you're against the death penalty and you can get out of it", I can tell you that I spent the next 30-45 minutes like I was being worked over by a couple of cops to get me to confess. The prosecutors basically wanted to make absolutely sure I wasn't just trying to get out of doing my civic duty, and it was... NOT PLEASANT.**

This time around I was back at my old Petit Jury summons, so I arranged with my employer to make sure they were aware I might be out for a few weeks or more, and readied myself for his past Monday.

To my surprise, I wasn't required to attend, so after my dismissal I just started up work as usual.

The next several days were the same: unless you're already attached to a case, you do not have to go to the Courthouse.

And tonight I received the following news:

Wow.

I was not expecting that. I fully expected to have to check in sometime over the next week --well, except for Thanksgiving Day, that is-- but I guess the case docket isn't very full right now.

And while I'm not superstitious, I sure hope I didn't burn all of my good luck this year having the easiest jury duty service ever.

*For those not familiar with First Degree Murder, it's premeditated murder, and it carries with it a potential death sentence.

**When I finally was released and went home, I casually mentioned to my wife the name of the defendant --who was present the entire time while I and a half dozen others were being grilled-- and she said "HOLY SHIT! You were going to be on THAT case??!!!" Turns out she'd been following it closely in the news.