Leader or Dissenter

First comes the summons and the repeated phrase "You are to..." 

Every sentence in the summons begins with "You are to."

In Erie County if you show up late or not at all a deputy may well be sent to your house to find out why. So you show up way too early and stand outside of court freezing for half an hour. Then you sit in the jury assembly room and are forced to watch a TV show about jury duty and the old days when people were tried by ordeal. Tie a suspected criminal up and toss him in the water. If he drowns he was innocent and if he floats he was guilty. Sounds backwards but that's what the show indicated.

After that all we got to watch was CNN, though in fairness they did allow us to bring in lap tops, Ipads and even furnished a couple of computers and had internet access. I was sure that I would be dismissed since writers and lawyers aren't normally chosen as jurors for obvious reasons.

The best part of jury duty has to be voir dire and deliberations.

Voir dire (to speak the truth) is like a trial within a trial. It's part jury selection as well as rejecting jurors. The attorneys are looking for jurors who can be leaders and also those who can be dissenters. I was the first juror they questioned and was the first one chosen (yay) no idea if they thought I was a leader or a dissenter.

They asked what I do. I explained how I wrote (general reporting but primarily police). How exactly do I do the blotter, the plaintiff's lawyer asked. I explained that I go to the police station, sit in a room with a stack of police reports and try to condense a three to five or more page report into a paragraph or two and do this for all of the crimes and arrests that week.

College? BSN, RN license but not practicing (this case involved a great deal of medical testimony).

Defense lawyer wanted to know if I thought credibility was important in a trial. Of course. Absolutely and credibility was important in this case. I was chosen first and rather quickly. They seemed to focus more attention on people who appeared strong willed and opinionated.

Potential leaders I suppose but also potential dissenters depending on the situation.

I'll write more since I'm still getting back to blogging after a few weeks. But yeah, the voir dire had me wondering if I was a leader or a dissenter. But after the judge charged the jury he asked if anyone wanted to see a particular piece of evidence. I raised my hand.

I was the only one who did.

Those two hour lunches were brutal. At one point I found myself laying on a bench outside of city court like I was on a sofa. It was freezing and I got on my cell phone and complained and complained to my friend. I wanted to sleep. I brought lunch, ate it, took a walk, lounged on the bench and complained, listened to a lot of music on my Ipod...and I still had 1 to go! Just watch Lewis Black's video Airplanes and you'll have an idea of what these two hour jury duty lunches are like.

Yep. Lunch is the absolute worst aspect of jury duty. But then again, in Erie County there's the 4:30 rule so they let us out early every day.