Ching’s First Jury Duty Experience
Posted on September 9, 2024 by Ching under Life.
Where to begin on this one? A few months ago, I got my first Jury Duty summons. When I first received it, I was kind of excited because I had never been on Jury Duty before so it was going to be an all-new adventure for me. As you know, I am all about new experiences. But then, Brian started telling me how awful it would be. He said they would take my phone away and I wouldn’t be able to play pickleball or do Zumba. So then I began to dread it.
Not knowing what to expect, a friend of mine recommended that I watch the Jury Duty docu-series on Amazon Prime. Of course, I made Brian watch it with me. Without ruining the show for you, so many crazy things happened. It was completely wild. Having been through Jury Duty before, Brian told me it wasn’t anything like that. He said much of it was consistent but they only showed the interesting parts in the documentary and most of it is completely tear-your-eyes-out boring. Like 95% of the time you are going to be bored out of your mind. To be fair, the documentary isn’t really a “real” documentary. The show is more like a comedy documentary (if there is such a thing) but that’s all I can say without ruining it. I guess you’ll just have to watch.
So how was my experience? I actually didn’t hate it as much as I thought I would based on Brian’s recollection. I found the experience quite educational, actually. More on that in a minute.
One of the biggest differences between my experience and Brian’s is that, when Brian did it, they only gave them 30 minutes for lunch. On top of that, when they went down to the building cafeteria, it was closed and so all they had was vending machine food/snacks. Not only was he bored out of his mind, he also nearly starved to death. But, when I did it a couple of months ago, not only did we get a full hour for lunch, nearly every single time we returned from lunch or break, it took a good 20-30 minutes before we resumed so we really got hour and a half lunches.
On the first day, I thought I would be there all day and wouldn’t get longer than 30 minutes for lunch so I packed some fruit and an adult lunchable, and also had Brian drive me (so I wouldn’t have to mess with the parking garage). We ended up getting an hour so I had Brian meet me for lunch. That’s the day I discovered Tacos y Mariscos, this amazing taco truck that served all sorts of street tacos. You could get beef, chicken, pork, and even shrimp. I told myself, if they’re back the next day, I’m eating their food again.
As far as Jury Duty itself, I ended up being assigned to a criminal case presided by Judge Dahl. I found out that there are two types of cases you could be summoned for — criminal and civil. Criminal cases usually finish within a week, whereas civil cases can last for multiple weeks. Therefore, if you do not want to be on Jury Duty for an extended period, pray that you get on a criminal case.
The case I was on was a sexual assault that took place clear back in December 2020. Because of the backlog (partially due to everything getting shut down due to COVID and other factors), the trial wasn’t happening until almost 4 years later. They start with an overview and introductions — the Judge is in the room along with the prosecuting attorney, the defense attorney, and the defendant — and then go through a series of questions to discover if there might be underlying biases or other reasons (health, personal, etc.) why each prospective juror should be excused. I gathered that at least half (there were about 40 of us in the room that they were trying whittle down to 12 plus 2 alternates) of the people there did not want to be there and were actively trying to get out of Jury Duty. They’re looking for 14 people to hear the case objectively. Only 12 will have votes that count but they don’t tell you who the 2 alternates are because they want every single juror to pay attention. The fear is that if you think you’re an alternate, then you tune out most of the time and then something happens to one of the jurors and you actually step in, but you know nothing because you haven’t been paying attention. So they were going to choose 14 of us to say but the 2 alternates will not know that they’re actually alternates. So that’s the plan.
Ideally, you want to get all the way through jury selection on the first day so you can begin the trial the next day. Sometimes, you get lucky, and jury selection is completed super efficiently and you can actually begin the trial on the first day. My coworker Shane Batchelder who happened to be Jury Duty the same week (ran into him outside on our lunch break) was on a case and they actually got to begin the trial on Monday afternoon.
Anyway, when we were released on Monday afternoon, we were nowhere near getting the jury selected. Realizing that the trial couldn’t start on Tuesday morning because jury selection wasn’t complete, I was actually beginning to doubt whether this whole trial could finish by Friday. However, Judge Dahl seemed confident that we wouldn’t have to be there all week and he’s been through hundreds of these and this is only my first one, so what do I know? I did know that we were going to get at least an hour for lunch so I decided to drive myself the next day. Which, I’m glad I decided to drive because everyone ended up being released early. I remember going to break before lunch, maybe around 10:30 AM, and they told us to come back a certain time. We all came back on time like obedient little children and then 10-15 minutes passed and we still didn’t resume. Another 30 minutes passed and still nothing. We waited and waited, until it was like lunch time and still nothing. I remember thinking, “Well, now it’s time to break for lunch.” We were all just sitting there, captive, awaiting further instruction. I guess the one nice thing is that they don’t take your phone away anymore (they just make you put it on silent and promise to pay attention and not be on your phone during the sessions) so I was able to check emails and catch up on things in the meantime.
When the Judge and the clerk returned, they ended up releasing us to return to the jury assembly room for further instruction. Down there, we all ended up getting released, which is what I thought would happen because by Tuesday afternoon, all of the trials that needed jurors would have started already.
Come to find out, during the break (and all of that time we were waiting), they were making deals behind the scenes. The defendant ended up accepting a plea deal. He pleaded guilty to fewer counts but, I suppose, it was a win-win for everyone because the case wouldn’t go to trial. We get to skip everything and fast forward to sentencing, which just happens to be this week (if I remember correctly). I looked it up after we got released. You’re not allowed to look up anything, do any kind of research, or talk to anyone about the case/trial and I’m a good girl who follows instructions so I really didn’t look into it until after.
I was tempted to go to the sentencing hearing. Alas, I cannot because it’s during the work day. However, I am really curious what the sentence is. Granted, he plead guilty to fewer counts than what he was originally charged but this is the second such conviction for this defendant so who knows what the sentence will be? I guess I will just have to look it up later. Check back in a week and I’ll try to provide an update (if I can remember).
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