Well, That Didn't Last Long
My stint as a juror lasted just a day.
I arrived way too early (7am for an 8am start), as I’m completely paranoid about Seattle traffic and then headed into the Juror Room. I was the first there and got a prime spot at a desk right next to the WiFi hotspot.
At around 9am, the court clerk gave a quite humourous presentation about what we were in for during the day - apparently involving a lot of waiting around. He said that every now and again they’d call about thirty to forty people to a court room for the selection process for a trial. Most trials there are apparently quite short, he said. Two to three days max.
Anyhow, my waiting around didn’t last long.
At 9:15, I was called as number 15 out of 55 people to Judge Heller’s court.
So off we went - I got to sit in the Jury box! Cool.
After we all settled down, the Judge explained what was going to happen and the whole voir dire process. He them informed us that the trial (a civil trial) was likely to take about three weeks!
Erk.
He then proceeded to ask the Jurors if this would involve any hardship, where hardship is defined as “you better be having heart surgery next week” - well, he didn’t quite say that, but I believe that’s what he meant…
Needless to say, I didn’t qualify for that exemption, but after the whole Jury selection process finished, it appeared that the defense council didn’t like me too much and I was excused.
Maybe I was just a little too loud and opinionated…
It’s a pity really, I would actually have liked to have served…
Hey..me too. Back in September I was picked. I was selected on a criminal fraud trail, state/feds vs. some dude. After two and a half days of listening to each side's case, the judge declared a mistrial for a reason not told to us jurors. That kind of sucked, but it was a couple of free days off work and a nice change in lunchtime cuisine. Too bad for the prosecution too....I KNOW that guy was guilty....hahahahah.