April 2nd - Jury duty

I have jury duty this week.  The policy in Gwinnett County now is one day/one trial.  That means that once you serve a day or on one trial during your week, you are released for the rest of the week.  Of course, you don't know until the night before which day you will have to report, so you have to keep the week pretty open, just in case. 

I was fortunate to be called for Monday.  I had to be there at 8 am and was finally released about 3 pm.  It turned out that I did nothing but sit and read for the whole day.  They initially divided the group into three panels.  The first was the largest, with close to 40 people.  The second was about 25 people.  The third panel had only 14, which is the one I was assigned to.  I think that was state court, since many of those juries are only 6 people.

Anyway, the first panel was called for voir dire, came back and then were taken in smaller groups for interviews.  Finally they were all taken back to select the jurors for the trial.  That all took pretty much the whole day, so those chosen for the jury may have had to come back Tuesday to finish the trial.  Who knows?  Once the jury was chosen, the rest of the panel was released.  That was about 3 pm.

The second panel was called for their voir dire, came back, and were all released, except those chosen for jury.  That group was the first released and that was still before lunch.

My group just sat and waited.  Finally, the bailiff came in with a big stack of papers and announced that all the cases had settled and we would not be needed for court.  However, because the other two panels had not yet finished, we were not released, in case more people were needed to complete their juries.  When panel 1 was finally released, we were also released. 

So on Monday, panel 2 was the lucky one, unless you got chosen for the jury!  Of course, when Lisa had jury duty, she was chosen for the jury and she thought it was a lot of fun.  She still complains that half way through the trial, they settled, meaning she didn't get to be involved in a final verdict.  She didn't even mind having to go back the second day.

In my case, I took the Kindle, started a new book, and had read 80% of it by the time I was released.  I do love the Kindle!