Jury Duty

I went to jury duty today, it is the first time I have ever gone. I got summoned before a few times but I have always been a student, or something. The one time I was willing to go in Austin, I wasn’t selected. In Austin they mail you a big questionnaire and then you’re kinda thrown out based on things you say there so you don’t have to go very often. That’s not the case in Houston; someone told me it used to be like Austin’s though, so I guess it’s not a case of being slow, but of having some problem with that setup.

Anyway, I got there at 8am, I was going to ride the bus, it is free when you’re a juror, but I would have had to transfer, and that takes forever, and I only live like a 10 minutes from the courthouse, so.

When I got there we sat in a big room until 8:15 then they collected our papers, they had collected them from some early people before. We watched a short movie about jury things, then we had a break from 8:30 to 9, because we were probably so tired from sitting there 30 whole minutes. Then they started assembling the panels.

The courts around the area need panels to select the jury from, there is a criminal court building, family, and civil all in the same area and the jurors for all of those are drawn from the same pool.

The woman working the desk had powerpoint hooked up to the monitors and would type out the new number range, and then switch to slideshow mode and then call the range out on microphones. If you were in that range then you lined up wherever she told you.

Some courts needed large pools, like the one I was part of, they would be sent to colored areas marked on the floor and sent away.

The lawyers asked us a bunch of questions, some people are really scary I think, I’m glad we have that system so they can remove people that have no idea what justice is. More people than not think that jail/probation is for punishment more than rehabilitation. I’d say 65/35 split. That’s pretty good I guess. A surprising number of people would be willing to convict based on only one witness though if they believed the witness enough.

Also the defense attorney was wearing cowboy boots, which is no good.