speedy and public

I’ve been on call for jury duty the whole month of August (it’s been a crazy month), but made it until last Monday to actually get called in. I didn’t really want to do it, but it’s not a real big inconvenience since I’m a government employee and they (obviously) encourage participation… and they give jury leave. :)

First I forgot to fill my car with gas so it was blinking at me by the time I got there. And then I drove past the poorly marked parking deck and the street turned into a one way and I had a little trouble finding it again. Hooray for starting off the morning flustered!

It was kind of cool to be there… they were selecting a jury for a criminal trial and the judge talked about how great it is that we have the right to a trial by a jury of our peers… lots of “all rise” and gavel pounding…administered the oath… introduced the lawyers, and the defendant… and then told us it was a child porn case. *gulp* um… yikes!? Yeah. So then they called out 14 names at random, I was the second one called. We had to go sit in the jury box and the judge asked us all kinds of questions about being fair and impartial, and about computers and digital cameras. Then he went through each of the questionnaires we had already filled out with more questions. Apparently he didn’t like something I had written on mine, so they called me to the side and ended up excusing me for the rest of the month. *phew*

As much as I appreciate that we have the privilege of jury trials, and the privilege of having to be proven guilty, I was not sad to leave that courtroom. The case has been in the newspaper the last few days (you can find it under police and courts on pjstar.com)… yeah, I’m glad I’m not there. My personal, gut reaction to it all is that if there’s enough evidence to indict for those charges they should be shot on the spot. I guess I wouldn’t be a very impartial juror. :)

Anyway, that’s how my week started. Blessings.