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I have deferred my jury duty multiple times in the past 5-6 years but this time I had no reason to defer so off to do my civic duty I went. I was pretty convinced that I would be dismissed and home before noon - I even told the kids that I'd be home by lunch. Having never reported to jury duty I wasn't sure how the process necessarily worked and so I had hopes that when my number was called to go across the hall, that it would be with purpose to send me home.
It wasn't.
I went from one room to another room and eventually found myself in the courtroom - but even then there were far more people that could serve on the jury so I still had hopes that my release was imminent. We received instructions from the judge and listened to both lawyers and then we were invited to ask questions and questions were asked of us. All of this just to determine the jury of 12.
When the selection was finally announced, I was called to sit on the jury. For the record, the lady that told the lawyer that she could determine a person's guilt by the color of aura they had surrounding them was released from serving - just good information to note in case you ever really do need to be home by noon.
In the end the process was interesting. I was willing to be a part of the process but was also glad that it wasn't a case that extended over multiple days and it was a theft case vs a violent crime. Surprisingly, in the end we found the defendant "not guilty". I think most of us on the jury actually thought the defendant probably did commit the theft but when we were tasked with finding guilt "beyond any doubt" we all acknowledged that the state laid out a very weak case that left plenty of room for doubt. "Better that 10 guilty men go free than one innocent man suffer", right?
I feel good knowing that the system worked the way that it was meant to work and today I was part of that system.
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