The Rural Juror

My shout out to 30 Rock

I've been on jury duty this week. Basically what this means is that I have to call in each evening after 5pm and see if I am needed. When I first got my summons, I was completely confused. An entire week of jury duty?!? What kind of dark magic conjures this?!?? I am guessing being on-call for a week is indicative of the rural environment in which I live. This is what you call small-town jury duty folks! What I am used to is getting a jury summons, looking at the day, going to the courthouse on that day ONE day, arriving around 8am and sitting in a room all day and hoping my number never gets called. While sitting for 8 hours once in Portland, I read Jon Krakauer's "Into Thin Air" book cover to cover. Not to brag, but I think I did a good job at selecting a book for that day, considering this was waaay before smart phones.

I called on Monday evening (Monday was a holiday, President's Day, so the courthouse was closed - at least I lucked out by limiting my week to four days) and alas, jurors were needed on Tuesday. So I drove the 25 minutes to small town called Mason, and arrived with about 60 other people. And then the games began. Like cattle, we were herded into the large courtroom, sat there as the secretary named 13 jurors. Not me, thank goodness. Then the judge, the prosecuting attorney, and the defense attorney all proceeded to ask questions of each juror. It was riveting. No, actually, it wasn't. It was quite boring. But I did learn a lot about society. After each round of questions from each attorney and the judge, jurors were dismissed. Then we got to start all over again, filling in for those who were dismissed because 1) he was a doctor and had to perform surgery the next day 2) she didn't know what reasonable doubt was and needed 100% proof 3) she just didn't really know anything about anything and just made decisions based on what her religion told her 4) she also didn't know what reasonable doubt was and confided she would be convinced by 99.9% proof 5) he felt that everyone is pretty much a liar. Again, fascinating. At least it was only one day, since the rest of the week no jurors were needed. Phew!