Jury Duty

You got the dreaded jury duty notice. I blogged this adventure so the "mystery" is removed as to what to do. You hear many people say, "You have to be stupid if you can't get out of jury duty".

I hear of more "stupid" people in jail, so I took my chances and went down to the court house here in Fort Worth Texas (not the jail...).

My advice is to leave early. You will have to find parking, deal with rush hour traffic, and then there is the metal detectors and taking off your shoes, etc....

You will come inside to a place where there are so many people. You will check in and then get a juror ID card. The judge will give her speech, and ask for people who can't serve to stand in line. Everyone in the line seem to be able to get out of it. Some were asked to come back at a later date. How awful ids that? Having to do this twice!

Then, from the remaining people, the judge starts assigning courts to jurors. It took less than an hour to get to this point from the time I arrived.

They asked me to fill out a questionnaire. I was to come back at 1:00 pm to my assigned Courtroom. It was 9:30 am, so I went back home and came back.

When I returned, the plaintiff and defendant came to a settlement, so I never even stepped into the courtroom. This happens a lot from what I hear. I went to the waiting room to get my check. Got my six dollars and left. If I would have served, I would have received 40 dollars for day 2 and on.

I have included in this article copies of what they gave me. You will probably be more interested in this material than what I have to say.

What I have to say. Nobody wants to be there, except the people who have time and money to waste. Do you want those people on your Jury? This idea that a person is "Patriotic" if he serves is bull. If you don't serve like they ask of you, you get fined or go to jail? This sounds like communistic patriotism to me.

Okay, then there is the fact that let's say that I am in the jury. What's on my mind? How long is this going to last. Will I miss work. And then what do i do if everyone but me thinks the guy is guilty? They want to go home, and so do I. Of course I am just saying this to demonstrate a point. The defendants chance of getting a fair trial depends on people who have time and money to waste, and have the desire to stand on principle, even against 11 people!

But, it worked for OJ. How they found a group of inept people like that, more than one! Wow! But that was OJ's defense the whole time. Make this trial so long and tedious, and have the anger pointed towards the government (some of these folks wanted to go home) that an innocent verdict was inevitable. But who has this kind of money to retain several lawyers for this long a period of time? Not too many people.

Which is another argument. The rich have the money to get out of a conviction, the poor do not.

Look at the pictures of the brochures, see what you think. I did my duty as a citizen and it opened my eyes. By the way, I wore a shirt with a guy choking another guy (animated) to steal his guitar. That did not get me out of my duty. Good luck in your adventure!