Well, it’s gone midnight and I’ve just finished up my final proofing edits (why does this always seem to take so long?!) – I would have had them completed much earlier (yeah, right…) if I hadn’t been called up for jury duty last week. Now before you all roll your eyes in sympathy, I was actually excited about the prospect of serving on a jury. In Australia, you see, lawyers (at least when I was practising) are not allowed to serve on juries.
The thought that I was never going to get a glimpse of what it was like to be on the other side – hearing the arguments rather than making them, weighing up the evidence and actually getting to decide whether a person was guilty or not – always bugged me until I realized that now, as a US citizen, I may actually get to be on a jury (I know, it’s sad just how cool I thought this would be).
Last Wednesday was my first ever experience of the American crim
inal justice system (really…) and my first ever jury duty summons as a US citizen, and I have to say it was anticlimactic to say the least.
inal justice system (really…) and my first ever jury duty summons as a US citizen, and I have to say it was anticlimactic to say the least.First off, I had no idea how boring it would be – or how bizarre it was to sit in court listening to people on the first ‘randomly chosen’ jury panel go over their backgrounds, while the rest of us schmucks had to wait…and wait…just in case. I found that I couldn’t turn the lawyer in me off – after each potential juror finished answering their background questionnaire, I found myself mentally deliberating on whether, and on what grounds, I would have tried to excuse them. Every time the judge (who was, I have to say, exceptionally nice as well as funny) issued instructions I also found myself saying ‘yeah, yeah…blah, blah,blah..beyond a reasonable doubt…’ before an inner voice shouted “Just get on with it!!”
As it turned out the case (should I have even ended up on the panel) was due to run through this week and since I’m heading off to London later today (yay!) on a research trip I had to be excused anyway.
So, since my first jury experience turned out to be a bit of a fizzer, I was wondering if anyone had any juicy jury stories to tell me instead. Go on, let me live vicariously…or at least provide me with some truly excruciating, bored to the eyeballs stories so I can feel vindicated.