Jury Doodie - Day 1
I received a summons in the mail a few weeks ago for jury duty. This is the first time I've been called since living in this city/county. I was called twice when I made my residence in Houston, however one of the times I was in college and physically living in another city and an active student so I was excused. The other time I reported but never was assigned to a court, just sat in the jury room all day reading a book and was dismissed later in the afternoon with the thanks of the justice system.
I reported at 8:15 a.m. on Wednesday February 14th (Happy Valentine's Day to me, thankfully I don't celebrate that Hallmark holiday) to the Justice Center in downtown. I parked and walked in the freezing wind over a block and went in. Through the metal detectors and into a long line. A few minutes later the line filed into a big room, we had our summons scanned and picked up a plastic badge thingy to put our nametags in. I had been chatting with the man in line next to me so we ended up sitting next to each other. He was very friendly, about 50 I'd guess, and had done this before so I asked him all kinds of questions about what to expect. They showed this little "movie" of sorts with lots of clips from TV shows and movies depicting court room scenes - with everything from Law & Order to Legally Blonde and Liar, Liar - interspersed with past jurors saying how much they enjoyed serving the justice system in this very important duty of us citizens of the good 'ol U.S. of A. They also talked about what it meant to serve on a jury and an overview of what we could expect. It was very high school assembly-ish.
After everyone got there and checked in, we were given more information about what the day would hold for us, then we took an oath to answer all questions asked to us in a truthful manner, and then the people who thought they weren't eligible or should be excused formed a line in the front of the room to talk to the jury baliff and her assistant. This line was loooooooooooooooong. I was surprised. Especially since right there on the summons it explains the qualifications and exemptions and allows you to mail in a portion of your summons to where you don't even have to show up there if you don't meet all the criteria. Why would anyone drive all the way downtown, find crazy parking, walk to the building, stand in the line, listen to all the jibber-jabber, take the oath, etc just to then do what they could've done in the warmth and comfort of their own home. People constantly amaze me.
When that line was finished she began calling names .... 3 different sets of people were called and given court assignments. Then a very large group of names, around 50 or so were called. Those people were told that there were no more court assignments for the day and that they would serve as the reserve jury pool for that afternoon and that they could go hang out for a while and report back to that room at 1:30 p.m. They sort of grumbled and shuffled out the door to go find something to do for the next 3 1/2 hours. Well ... since we'd heard the jury baliff say there were no more court assignments left to dole out the rest of us thought we were home free! But alas, she started calling names again, another list of around 50. Those people were told they were the MORNING reserve jury pool and that they could go take a short break and report back in about 30 minutes. I was still sitting in my chair at this point ... thinking I had great luck and was going to get to leave and be done with it. Then they asked for 6 volunteers to go down and report to a city court (as opposed to the county court where we'd been summoned). After much cajoling, 6 volunteers emerged and again I thought I was safe. Thought being the term to focus on there.
Sometime in the few minutes those 6 volunteers were doing their thing, another court assignment came in. One that required 60 potential jurors to be called. I was lucky #24. We had to fill out a questionnaire for the judge and turn it in. Then we were told we had to report back to his courtroom the following morning at 8:45 a.m. and that we were free to go for the rest of that day. Yippeee!
To be continued on day 2 .....................
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