Civic Duty-part one

Monday, March 9th I had jury duty. I had postponed my civic duty when I was originally called because I was up at The Cave with LT Dan. Peachy. So I show up for jury duty at 8am. Of course it was dark because it's the first day of daylight savings time and of course I'm going to somewhere I have never been. YAY.

I'm totally unprepared for what happens to me...I sign in and get a juror tag, then I get a form. Something like you have been called for a capital murder case called "xxx" (I'm not putting a name-some asshat will find me and harass me), do you know this entire page of people's names. Oh boy. I know one name out of an entire page of names.

Go sit. Find coffee (which btw only exists because one of the judges pays for it). Sit some more. An hour and a half later I've been assigned to group one, and I'm filling out a nosy form. The nosy form asks about who you are, where you live, where you work, your marital status, your children, your criminal status, your victim status, where does your husband live and work...and on and on. It's a triplicate form so everybody gets one, the court, the prosecution and the defense.

They call group one, off we shuffle to the courtroom for voir dire. Voir dire is basically questioning potential jurors. What is lovely about this, is it is done with people present in the courtroom. People you don't know, people who are both family of the defendant and family of the victim. Great, so now, you are answering specific questions about where you live and work, who takes care of your children, where your family lives and works, what you and your family criminal status is, what you and your family victim status is. In detail. LOTS of detail. With your name. Your full name. In front of strangers who in one way or another are involved in murder, drugs, guns, gangs. I love it. Not so much.

Oh yeah, and the death penalty, how do you feel about the death penalty. Have you ever actually thought about how you feel about the death penalty? I mean seriously thought about it? I can't say I had in more than a philosophical way until then.

The one good thing for my voir dire was it was early on a Monday and the first day of daylight savings time, apparently not too many people wanted to get up and go to court quite yet. For later potential jurors the courtroom was full of people. I can't imagine the discomfort for them. Especially when they eventually got picked for this jury.

Husband meanwhile is concerned but not too much on day two of all day jury selection and I am still there. He says, tell me something I can Google. I tell him Google words. He disappears for a while and comes back with "Sweet Jesus" (this does NOT make me feel better and I CAN'T Google so I'm screwed, everybody else knows more than I do!) and then asks me if our neighbor who looks out for me is tracking on all this and I say no and he says "well tell him NOW" Great. Oke doke.

Neighbor goes away (apparently also to Google) and later comes out with his dog and says "I just need to know one thing, do I have your authorization to use lethal force inside your home." *blink* I look at him and say yes, you do. Peachy. Now I'm really not very happy.

Day three of all day jury selection. Yeah. So now I have heard probably better than 120 people answer the nosy questions. One guy basically had PTSD from doing a capital murder trial as a juror like 15 years ago. Oh.my.God. End of the day comes, and these days are long, get there at 8 ish leave at 7 ish. Jury names are called oh great its me. Husband says..."do they pay you?" I say yes, for what that's worth. He says, "oh honey, I knew you would get a job!" Can we say I will beat you now dear husband?

Note to self: Learn to lie. Learn to lie well. You suck at telling lies but you need to figure out how to do it. Never do this again this jury thing. Never. Yeah.

Part two sometime...