Thursday, May 23, 2013

My experience with jury duty

After counting myself lucky for not having a single jury duty, my luck ran out and recently I was summoned for a potential jury duty pool. First of all for those people who do not know what jury duty means or have not had the opportunity to watch some courtroom shows of the U.S, here is the somewhat complete rundown of the process of jury duty. There are civilian and criminal cases and most of the time, the cases start with a pool of citizens asked to perform the jury duty. It is when you are asked to show up at the county court where you live and ask some questions by the defense and prosecuting attorney to ascertain if you are eligible for jury duty. The people who are selected perform jury duty and are called Jurors. You just sit in the court house and listen to what the competing lawyers have to say about the suspect and then decide if they are guilty or not. Usually the jurors are just ordinary folks who may not have heard about the case and are required to sit to listen to lawyers jargon and judge's instructions on how to give a verdict. So although finally I was not chosen as a juror, I had the experience to be on standby for almost two days. So here is the process through I had to go. I got the summon in the mail and was not that quiet excited about it but had to follow the rules lest I may be held in contempt of court and suffer major punishment. So I waited for my time and the day before the jury day, I had to either call the court or go online to find out if I have been called and no surprise I had to show up the next morning at 8.15 at county court.

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