Jury Duty --again

dmd77
Wed, 08 Jul 2009 16:28:23 +0000

I’ve been called twice. The first time I served on a DWI case. It was very rewarding, because one of the jurors was a new citizen (6 weeks!) and from the Soviet Union (it was 1988 when I served). When we got to deliberations, her first question was “the judge didn’t tell us whether to find him guilty or not, what do we do?” We explained to her that it really was up to us, and everyone stopped whining about jury duty then and there. We found him guilty on one charge and innocent on the other.

The second time, it was a car-breaking-into case, and I’d recently had my car breaking into, and when the judge described the case, I felt an enormous surge of fury. I told the judge I just couldn’t see being objective, and he dismissed me.