Geekshow

I just finished with jury duty today after two days.  It was almost exactly like any courtroom drama you see on TV, except all the boring parts weren't edited out (which is most of it).  Plus you don't get that Law & Order “bum bum” sound. ;)

Anyway, I just thought I'd share.  Anyone else ever had to do jury duty?

The trial I was on was a domestic violence assault case.  The guy admitted to the cops that he had done it, so we pretty much had to decide which variety of assault charges the evidence supported (ie “with a deadly weapon”, “intent to kill”, etc).  The State was pretty much just throwing the book at the guy, trying to get something to stick, but there wasn't enough evidence for anything beyond simple assault. 

This was all on the Thursday & Friday the first week of the NCAA Tournament.  We even had one lady on the jury who had tickets to see the games in Greensboro that day.  We even checked the game scores on cell phones in the jury room on one of our breaks.

Anyway, here's what I posted about it on another forum right after it was over:

I just got done with a 2-day trial yesterday, and I have to say that I am glad that it is done. Some things were very interesting to observe, but a lot of things were very boring.

The first day was especially boring for me. They brought in a large group of potential jurors into the courtroom about 10:30 in the morning. I was the second person called up into the box, and I spent the rest of the day listening to the same questions over and over as the attorneys kept rejecting just about everyone but me. They got rid of so many people that they had to bring in another group of potential jurors before they were satisfied. It got to the point that the judge started asking most of the questions the attorneys had been asking all day in an effort to speed things up.

The one part of the first day that was far from boring came towards the end when they were trying to get the first alternate juror. A woman came up, and when she was asked if she or anyone she knew had ever been involved in domestic violence, she said “You don't even want to get me started!” Then she went on to say things like “I've been on both sides of it. I've gotten beat up! I've stabbed a guy, and I've even shot somebody! We never reported it to the police. We just handled it ourselves.” Imagine a semi-redneck woman in her mid-thirties who is very loud and just won't shut up, and you'll get an idea of what she was like. The rest of us couldn't believe she would actually spout off like that to the judge. Needless to say, she was eliminated as a juror very quickly.

The second day was much more interesting as we actually got to hear the case. There were a few times we had to leave the courtroom so the attorneys could discuss something with the judge we couldn't hear. Luckily we were able to reach a verdict fairly quickly and we didn't have to come back today.