We Live to Serve

After an entire week of availability and no call-in for jury service, I had to report at 7:30 am Friday. At 9:30 am, after watching a video about how much fun it is to serve on a jury and how good it will make me feel to serve in this capacity, we were given given instructions. The list of potential jurors for 2 scheduled trials had been divided: one group would stay, the other group would leave -- and return at 1:15 pm. That was MY group, not one of us who seemed happy at the prospect of serving on a jury.

At 1:15, we were again in-serviced about this terrific opportunity, then taken into the courtroom to hear the judge's speech. After this warm welcome, we were read the charges against the defendant -- all 15 of them! We were warned that the trial could take the next 3 weeks and then given the 3 very restricted reasons that we could be either excused or postponed for jury service, reasons that did not include finding the lengthy list of charges against the defendant reason enough to save the taxpayer's time and money for a lengthy court trial!

Of course, none of the 3 extreme legitimate reasons for not serving fitted me at that time and on that day, so when the judge said that unless we may qualify for non-service, we were to leave the courtroom at that time and return again Monday at 1:15 to begin the voir dir, I drove back home and fussed and fumed about how unfair life is in my little corner of it.

I feel that I already served 5 days: I had to reschedule my life, call in every day, sometimes twice, and that took more effort for others than it did for me, but still impacted my life for an entire week. To think that I may have to spend the next 3 weeks of my life continuing this important service to my community irritates the hell out of me. We were told the mantra "one day, one jury" many, many times yesterday, but it's not "one day" when it's an entire week of being on-call, and especially not so when that "one day" may well become 3 weeks.