Monday, June 07, 2010

Jury Duty Day 1

What an interesting three days in court this week! I will write all three days up and set them to post on Wednesday -- after the trial is over since we are not allowed to talk about it until then.

Monday, June 7, 2010: After arriving at the courthouse and gaining security clearance, I sat in the gathering room with about 100 others for about an hour until they finally called 30 of us into a courtroom. Each of us were asked to stand, tell our names, general area of the county in which we live, our occupations, our spouses' names and their occupations.

Both the prosecutor and the defense attorney asked us questions to find out whether we knew any of the principals in the case and whether we had any particular prejudice in regard to family violence or spousal abuse. Other questions seemed to be designed to find out if we had any prejudice against police officers. Among the questions the defense attorney asked: "Have any of you been victims of family violence or any other crime such as assault, robbery or murder?" He realized what he had asked immediately, and the court had a little laugh before continuing.

Finally, the two attorneys and the judge convened in a sidebar and chose 12 of us to serve when the trial starts tomorrow. Ten women and three men were chosen. I have no idea how they chose which members of the jury pool would serve. This entire process took from 8:30 AM to Noon. We were dismissed with instructions to appear tomorrow morning at 9:00 A.M. Since today is Jim's and my 47th wedding anniversary, we managed to meet and have lunch together after I was dismissed.

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