Wednesday, February 20, 2008
Jury Duty
I did my civic duty today: Jury Duty. As it always happens, nothing happens for weeks and then two events converge on the same day. By coincidence another part of our uniquely form of American government happened today that I wanted to be a part of and that was attending the Obama rally.
Yes I did want to be part of the jury. This is only the second time I’ve ever been called, the last was about six years ago, and both were DWI cases. The first time I was in the hot zone, I think I was juror #7, but was skipped. This time I was #11 so it wasn’t too likely they would take me. As it turned out the last juror picked, they only take 6, was juror #10. Two people that they skipped were a woman who was injured in a DWI wreck and couldn’t give a fair opinion and a man who was a patent attorney.
I sounded like it had some interesting aspects to the case. Not enough for me to stay and watch but I would have liked to know the outcome. The defendant was a fairly cute blond stick who looked like one drink would put her over. From the voir dire, it looked like there was not breath or blood test. It was hinted that there was a video tape of the field sobriety test and that defense was going to challenge the validity of how the test was given.
Yes I did want to be part of the jury. This is only the second time I’ve ever been called, the last was about six years ago, and both were DWI cases. The first time I was in the hot zone, I think I was juror #7, but was skipped. This time I was #11 so it wasn’t too likely they would take me. As it turned out the last juror picked, they only take 6, was juror #10. Two people that they skipped were a woman who was injured in a DWI wreck and couldn’t give a fair opinion and a man who was a patent attorney.
I sounded like it had some interesting aspects to the case. Not enough for me to stay and watch but I would have liked to know the outcome. The defendant was a fairly cute blond stick who looked like one drink would put her over. From the voir dire, it looked like there was not breath or blood test. It was hinted that there was a video tape of the field sobriety test and that defense was going to challenge the validity of how the test was given.
# posted by ChrisR @ 10:00 PM 
