This might get long, but... who really gives a damn.

Today was the day of my jury duty. Most people dread this, and I used to, but I have since changed my mind. The last time I got a jury notice was right around two years ago. I noticed that when I got that one I really didn't mind, so I am not exactly sure at what point in time I found it acceptable. The other one from two years ago was the first one I ever got, so its probably safe to assume that its one of those things where the anticipation of the thing is worse than the thing itself. Although, last time, I did not want to get selected for a jury, and thankfully I didn't. This time I DID want to get selected, because watching a trial would be neato, and sending some perp to prison, or even death, would be an interesting human experiment. When you go to jury duty though, you have no idea what you sort of case you could get. Triple murder, speeding, rape or maybe even a civil trial where no crime has been committed.

Anyway, so I go to the courthouse and enter the central jury room. It holds roughly 500 people from my estimation, and it was mostly full, probably 400-450 people there. I estimated by counting how many chairs were in a row, then counting the amount of rows, I am not just shooting from the hip. I arrived at 8:00am, and around 8:30 or so, they tell the room that a judge will come talk to everyone, and then they would start pulling juries for the day. At about 9, a judge comes in and welcomes everyone and gives a quick rundown of how stuff works. She also mentioned they had 6 trials today, so there would be a lot of jurors needed. About 9:30 or so, the other lady comes back and reads the names of people in the first pool, 48 people, my name wasn't called. Around 10, she comes back for another batch, 60 people this time, and I get called, yay!

We make our way to the third floor for more waiting outside the courtroom. Around 10:30, all 60 people make their way into the court room for the voire dire process. This narrows the 60 down to the 12 needed for the trial. During this process, the perp is sitting there in a chair with his attorney, and the prosecution is there as well. This case was a state district court case for a state jail felony DWI with a child under 15 years of age in the car. In Texas, a DWI is a misdemeanor, but if you have a child with you, its a state jail felony, which is very serious. Minimum 180 days in jail, and up to 2 years, along with a fine of up to $10,000.00. Heavy shit, trust me, you don't want any. The perp in this was a Mexican American who did not speak English, so the court provided a translator. This poor chump looked remorseful, and scared shitless. Yet, on the other hand, his case was at the voire dire stage, so he clearly he decided a plea bargain was not for him, so maybe he had some compelling evidence to prove his innocence.

The judge spent a few minutes going over the procedures of how a trial works, and then the prosecutors, who worked for the State of Texas, began explaining what a DWI is and what is needed to return a guilty verdict. As they were talking I noticed that the courthouse was really quite a fantastical feat of architecture. The building is brand new, having been built within the last year. I detected a faint pickle odor for some reason, but other than that is really was a beautiful courtroom, paid for by my tax dollars, and I don't mind saying, that I feel I did a really fucking good job on it. Way to go!

After the prosecution talked about the specifics of what a guilty verdict entails, they spent a few minutes asking personal questions that might exempt people from such a case. Out of the 60 potential jurors, there were maybe 10 or 15 that had issues that would certainly exempt them. Perhaps they themselves had been nailed with a DWI, or even worse, had been the victim of someone else's DWI. At some point in the procedure, they also mentioned that maybe 20 people on the far left side of the courtroom, were essentially a backup pool, and would most likely not be selected.

So out of the 60 total, 20 were backups, and another 15 would easily be discounted due to built in bias. So taking that 35 out, this brought my chances to basically 12 out of 25 or about 48%. Pretty good. Then I thought about something, and took a quick look around me. Out of all the people in the room, I was probably one of maybe 3 or 4 people in there that did not have children. Since the case involved a child, it would make sense to me that the defense would want me, because I would maybe not be as sympathetic to that aspect of the trial as someone who did have children. On the other hand, the prosecution might want me, and for practically the exact same reason! Since I don't have children, I would not be lenient on the perp, because someone with children might go for probation versus jail time at sentencing based on what might happen to the child if the perp went to prison.

At that point, I was convinced that I would in fact, make the jury. After the prosecution was done, the state appointed defense attorney spent a few minutes explaining why it is so hard to defend these cases, blah blah blah. His thing was sorta like the prosecution, except essentially taking the other side. The only thing he did that I thought was a little crafty, was to compare the prosecution team, who admittedly were younger folks, to American Idol contestants. He was using this reference in my opinion, to make the potential jurors think that they were simply too young and 'good looking' to know what they were doing. It was an interesting tactic, but one that would likely work on some of the older people in the room. The other thing he brought up that was strange was when he started in on the "Intoxilyzer 5000", which the police use to check your blood alcohol level at the scene. He went on and on about how it was a machine, and it was not infallible, and then proceed to talk about atomic energy, and nuclear reactors, and in particular, the Chernobyl incident in 1986. His point was that machines can make mistakes, and destroy people lives forever, so we should maybe not rely on machines so much. It was a weird thing to do, but I understand why he did it. This entire voire dire process took about an hour and a half.

So after both teams did their thing, it was back into the hallway for another 30 minutes of sitting doing nothing. They call everyone back in, and read off 12 names, I was number 9! SCORE! I am on a fucking jury. YAY!!!! the 48 that didn't get picked are all excused and chosen ones are taken back to the deliberation room for instructions. Nothing too exciting here. You are assigned a jury badge for access to the secured areas of the building and given a sheet of instructions. By this time it was about 12:45pm, so we broke for lunch. We were expected back at 2p for the trial to begin. So I go to lunch, two chicken sandwiches... I'll need brain fuel for the trial. Large Diet Coke. Good to go.

At 2p at the dot, the 12th juror is finally back from lunch. About 10 minutes later, the judge walks into the deliberation room and explains that after the perp heard the judge explain the punishment range for the crime, and seeing the faces of the 12 jurors, he just went on ahead and plead guilty to the charges! What the fuck? Did this asshole just rob me of my trial? That bastard!! Well, indeed he did.

The judge explained that most cases of this nature are settled with a plea well before the trial date, and that for some reason, this poor sap just basically didn't believe what the attorneys were telling him about the punishment for a state jail felony. I believe that the guy thought for some reason that his case was maybe just a misdemeanor DWI and didn't realize the severity of it until the words came from the judge's mouth. As it turned out, the guy apparently was drunk, because the judge said he drove into a fucking ditch! The judge did not know how old the child was, only that is was under 15 years of age.

So I did get to be on a jury, but once again, I have yet to witness a court proceeding from the jury box. On a lighter note, I read approximately half of Stephen King's book entitled Blaze. It is pretty good so far.

Now, I cannot wait for my next jury summons. If there was some way to get on a priority list or something, I would. If history holds true, I should get another one in about two more years. Now I am one of those weirdos that would love to get jury duty. What's wrong with me?

I guess my point is don't knock it until you try it, fucker.