Jury Duty

I tried so hard to fulfill my civic duty yesterday... but alas, I was not selected to be a juror.

When I first got the news I was in the pool, I was kind of excited. I've always wanted to be on a jury. The guys who work for me... well, the reponses varied:

HA HA
Oh, that's cool, are you excited?
sorry to hear

But for me, I wanted to do this. I wanted just once to sit on a jury, to take part in this american tradition. So off to the county court house I went on Tuesday, naive, excited and filled with warnings of how boring this would be.

Well... my boring warnings came true.

After 5 hours of waiting with 50 other potential jurors, they started the selection process. I can thank either my brother for being in law enforcement (and me telling the truth about it... damn the truth!) or me for being a 'young' female. I made the first cut, from 50 down to 24 and thought, wow, I'm gonna make the jury.

That's when they stood us in a row, in front of the room, 4 at a time. The lawyers for the plaintiff and defendant saying 'yeah' or 'ney' on whether to put that person on the jury. It felt like a firing squad. The first 2 groups went and all the guys made the jury, none of the women. It was 'weird'.

So being magic number 8, I was asked to leave. My civic duty, done for the day, and very disappointed by it. Though I would not have handled very well the actual content of the trial (sexual abuse/rape of a 13 year old) I did want to sit on the jury. So instead of being part of the jury for the next 3-4 days (judge estimate) I left wondering why each person was or wasn't selected. I still wonder.