Judgment Day
Regular readers will have noticed that I have not posted, nor even done much in the way of the comments section of this blog, for the last week or so. This is because I have been called for, and am now serving, jury duty in the Bronx Supreme Court. After a day in the jury pool, my name was drawn for a panel, and as the attorneys did their winnowing, a jury of six (this is a civil case) was chosen, and then out of the remaining few possible candidates two of us were accepted as alternates. On the second day of the actual trial, one of the jurors went home for lunch break and took a nap from which he did not awake until it was too late to return to the courthouse. Then, in a moment not unlike that recorded in the first chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, the names of the two alternates, on bar-coded slips of paper, went into the spinning drum, and the lot fell on me. The case is expected to continue through most of the coming week. After which, I hope I will be able to resume blogging and commenting at a rate approaching the usual.
Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG
Posts
6 comments:
What luck! But we must do our civic duty when called upon. I'm confident that you will make a fair and balanced judgement, Tobias.
So they would frown on you blogging on your iPhone/iPad from the jury box during the boring parts?!? He, he, he.
I've always wanted to do Jury Duty, but alas it has not fallen to me.
Thanks, friends. Still catching up with other work. It is exhausting to sit in the jury box and maintain careful attention! And in the sometimes long breaks I am grateful for my Sony Reader, and have finished White's Memoirs and am now moving into Trollope's The Warden!
I've been called to jury duty for three trials (all criminal, but relatively minor crimes). It is indeed an interesting and valuable experience. In all three cases I found that, contrary to what you often see in fictional TV dramas, the jury members were very thoughtful, careful, resistant to counsel's attempts to bamboozle, and attentive to the relevant requirements of the law.
Some 20 plus years ago, I begged out of it on moral grounds (feeling unqualified to pass judgment on another human being).
I'm not sure how I would respond today.
Post a Comment