In the Courtroom

I was summoned to court by a letter in the mail a few weeks ago.   The letter told me I had been selected for jury duty.  I hear some people complain about jury duty, but not me, I was EXCITED.  I love stuff like this. I couldn't wait to get there and be a part of this process.  Why would anyone complain about this?

I arrived thirty minutes early.  This was my first time in the courthouse.  I sat down and took in the atmosphere of this place.

The ceiling in the courtroom was two stories tall.  Tall windows lined one wall.  Benches where the public sits were like church pews.  In fact one juror mentioned that it wouldn't take much to convert the court into a church.  A knee high wall separates the public pews from the rest of the court.  On the other side of that short wall were two tables.  Each smaller than your dining table.  Left side (facing judge) is the plantiff and his lawyer and the right table is the defendant and lawyer.  There is a center aisle between the tables and the lawyers sit closest to the aisle.  It's very much like you have seen on TV.

Before the judge enters, the room is mostly quiet.  The lawyers move around the courtroom talking to each other and some of the officials of the court.  There are several Bailiffs in the room.   Two doors behind the judges bench lead to a hallway.  Once in a while the lawyers and other officials duck into that hallway.   Just before the judge enters the room he is announced by a Bailiff asking everyone to please stand.  As soon as you stand up, the judge enters the room and asks you to please be seated.   Now the room is silent as the judge shuffles some papers.  He has his law clerk sitting on his left.  In front of them on a lower tier is the court reporter and the court clerk.

I was loving it.

Role call for the jurors took place after some short instructions from the judge.  There were roughly sixty of us in the jury pool.  The judge thanked us for our service and explained that we would be hearing civil cases this week.  There were already lawyers and their clients seated at the tables and in the jury box there were three or four more lawyers.  These were the lawyers for the cases later in the week.

During roll call of the jurors, the judge asked that we stand and announce where we work and where our spouse works.  As this was done, lawyers were taking notes.

The judge also announced several reasons that a person can be exempt from jury service.  He read them and asked if it applied to anyone.  Nobody stood.  Then he read several qualification rules and asked if we met those requirements.  He read them one rule at a time, pausing between for us to respond.  These qualifications were very basic things like being able to understand the English language and being a citizen of the County we were serving in.

The entire process of roll call and rules took almost an hour.  At that point the judge gave us a summary of the case.  He introduced the names of the parties involved and asked if any of us were related to these parties.  He asked if we had close business, personal, or social ties to these parties.  If someone stood, he would qualify what the relationship was and ask the juror if they felt they could be fair to both sides in this situation.  In all cases, the juror was allowed to make that decision for themselves.

Next, the lawyers introduced themselves and we were asked if any of us had relationships with the lawyers in any way or had previous cases involving these lawyers.

That process had taken another thirty minutes and we were given a break.  The computer would produce a random list of twenty of our names.  The lawyers would each be allowed to strike four from the list, leaving twelve jurors.  We were allowed a thirty minute break while the lawyers reviewed the list of jurors.

After the break, the twelve names were called.  As our name was called we walked over to the jury box and were seated by a bailiff.  The chairs were as I had seen on TV.  Swivel chairs with short wooden backs on them lined in two rows.  The jurors not called were dismissed.  I was sitting in a wooden swivel chair.

In a blog coming up I will write about my experience as a juror!  If this topic really bores you it should only take one more post.  I found the whole process very interesting.  I loved every bit of it.  Even the slow and boring parts.