Jury Duty

This was my first experience with jury duty and I was super excited and nervous! I had been looking forward to this for weeks and really wanted to get picked to sit on a jury. My family laughed at me and said "watch you get picked for a murder trial" I said "I hope so! Do you think I will?" They were kidding and I was serious.

So the big day finally arrived. I got there on time and walked into a room with hundreds of people summoned for jury duty. I was surprised by the number of people and figured I had no chance of getting picked. I found a seat and of course the mullet man decided to be my best friend. He was a very nice guy but at some point we had to move around and we got split up.

I sat next to a woman (Mary) in her 50s who had never had jury duty before and was also eager to be picked. We watched a video about how jury duty was our civic duty, what it means, and what to expect. We spent the next 45 minutes waiting for people to talk to the bailiff about why they wanted to get out of jury duty. 50-75 people got out of jury duty.

Then it was show time. The bailiff told us how everything would work and the way she talked it sounded like most of us would be put in a jury pool. Yes! Here we go!
Round 1 was 21 people and I didn't get picked.
Round 2 was 18 people and me and Mary were still holding our chairs down.
Round 3 another 18 people and nothing.
This sounds like a fast process but it was actually really slow.

Then a bailiff and woman came in and talked to the bailiff leading our jury thing. They talked to her for about 10 minutes and our bailiff did not look happy. Our bailiff then said "Well we are done for today and you will be dismissed shortly." Everyone breathed a sign of relief except Mary and I because we were disappointed. There were still hundreds of people in this room that all were about to go home. The bailiff then told us that the reason there was still over 300 people is because today they were going to start picking the jury for a capital murder trial seeking the death penalty (Good news! Just what I wanted!!). They have to have a large jury pool because they eliminate so many people. They plan this weeks in advance and get everything lined up to where nothing would stop the case from going to trial. EXCEPT the lead prosecutor had a death in the family so they decided to postpone the case. DARN IT!! Everyone let out another big sigh of relief (except Mary and I). The bailiff wanted to make sure that we understood what happened and they didn't intend on wasting our time. She explained that if the trial hadn't been postponed they would have picked around 200 people and we would all fill out a 20 page questionnaire. Then if we made it through that part then we would each have an interview that could last up to 2 hours and then there would be many more rounds of narrowing the jury pool. She went on and on explaining all the bad stuff to make people feel better but it all sounded like fun to me. She then explained that we won't be asked to come back and they we have done our duty and likely wouldn't be summoned for at least 2 years. Another sigh of relief minus Dianna and Mary. I wanted to be put back into the pool and try again. I was really disappointed. We each collected our $6 check for being there that day and were sent on our way.

I was done with jury duty by 11:00 and was back to work. What a let down!

In reality I would hate to be on a jury that would likely last weeks, be away from work, away from Kyle and mommy's team, possibly be sequestered, look at bloody pictures, and ultimately have to decide on whether someone lives or dies. But man it also sounds kind of exciting too. It was all over and I didn't get to sit on a jury, but I won't ever forget my first jury duty experience.

Oh and the mullet man found me when it was over and said "maybe next time."