I was called for jury duty recently. It has been some years since this happened. The last time I was excused because I was still nursing my youngest child, who is now in grade school. So the summons came. I filled out the form online, as one can do these days. On the big day I took the map the court sent and set off. There was a bit of maneuvering to get to the spot where the map started. They seem to assume you know how to find that bit of town. However, once there the signage was fantastic. There were arrows for juror parking at regular intervals. Once out of the car I joined a group of other clueless potential jurors following the painted footsteps on the parking garage floor. The security checkpoint people were kind and courteous and seemed to have learned to say the same things over and over and over every day without being bored out of their minds. Ditto once we were inside. One of the judges came down and gave us a pep talk. He was nice about it and gave every appearance of being sincere. We watched a brief video and then our handlers for the day took over. These nice ladies have the unenviable task of keeping us entertained, corralled, and accounted for until we are assigned a jury or released for the day. There were three trials slated to begin and so three juries might be needed. A large group of people were counted off and sent to the courtroom to be considered for one trial. The rest of us sat. Eventually we were told that one of the other cases settled and the third was going to be decided by a judge and not a jury so we were free to go. I walked out with another juror and we swapped gossip about the cases we might have been on, although my gossip was decidedly less interesting than hers. It was an interesting experience for me, probably less so for the guy who sat a few rows behind me and was trying to surreptitiously take calls for his plumbing business even though we had been told to turn off our phones.
Thursday, April 05, 2007
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8 comments:
Ah, jury duty in the 'burbs, so mundane. Only 3 trials! Here in the big Scrapple, you get 3 panels called before you've hardly even finished your complimentary breakfast. :)
complimentary breakfast? We didn't get a complimentary breakfast! Over a decade ago I was called for jury duty for a larger court, can't remember what it was called, in the city. We sat for hours and I was finally sent to a courtroom but not selected for a jury. I had worked with a relative of one of the lawyers and that may have gotten me kicked off. No complimentary breakfasts there either.
Yes, we have a lot of perks when doing jury duty in the city. :)
But seriously, the breakfasts (continental, BTW) come courtesy of the fines collected from jury duty scofflaws, of whom there are evidently a lot in Philadelphia.
Free food of any kind is a good thing!
I just got summoned too. My date is in a few weeks.
It's been a few years since my last summons, largely because I was techincally exempted for having sat on previous jury.
I was selected for a jury in a medical malpractice suit. After we were finally selected, we were given a fifteen minute break before we were to start. During that time, the parties settled, and we were sent home with gratitude, and a get-out-of-jury-duty-free cards for three years.
Just as well, because I suspect that medical mal. suits are tedious, gruesome, or some combination of both.
FWIW, I recall that they had a couple boxes of donuts there if you arrived early enough.
DD, I suspect you are right about med mal cases. One of the cases I escaped jury duty on dealt with an enviromental matter. No doubt jurors on that case will be listening to battling experts talking about parts per million. Med mal would probably have disturbing pictures to go along with all the minutia. It would be really interesting to be on a jury. The people I know who have served on them have fascinating stories to tell.
I'm under 30... I"ve been called summoned 6 times in 4 counties. I've been dismissed 3 times b/c I was in college, 2 b/c I knew the lawyers (how does that happen?), and the other time we were left to sit for 7 hours until we were dismissed for the day and told to call the hotline the next morning, only to find out we were dismissed.
And yet, I feel as if I've been cheated of a free breakfast.
LV,
I hear you. That breakfast thing is sticking with me, too. Maybe there were boxes of donuts out and I missed them. Hard to say. But the thought of missing so much as a free donut is enough to keep me up nights.
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