I haven't posted in a few weeks. Guess I went through a busy patch there for a bit. With Hula shows, Family members coming back from Hawaii and Baseball starting....we got busy.
I wanted to write a blog about my Jury Duty experience, cause it was just that....quite an experience!
Couple months ago I got my summons to appear in court for Grand Jury. I didn't realize this was different then regular Jury but once I read into it I then understood the difference. The morning I was supposed to be in court we got our first and last snow of the season....and all courts were closed! I was thrilled I didn't have to go. I was secretly hoping that this meant my name would go back into the system and it wouldn't be rescheduled. Well I was wrong, I received a 2ND summons for April 6th, this past Monday.
I'm pretty sure I could have gotten out of it being that I'm a SAHM and all. But being that my kids are older and David was off that day I decided to suck it up and just go.
Getting there sucked because it was raining. I was wearing dress close and my car has been acting up and wouldn't start. Then I couldn't find a parking spot and I was running late. My coffee thermos was leaking everywhere even though it was brand new @@ It was a rough morning.
I walked into the little room with chairs and I walked up to the desk to sign in. She asked my name and then said "Oh you are Grand jury you don't have to sign in". I then was put in a smaller room with a few other people and we just waited. In the end there were 8 of us...I guess the 9th person was a no show.
We only waited about 10mins and then we were lead out of the room and into the actual courtroom. We were put in the Jury box and then asked to rise as the judge came in. The judge then explained our job to us and said that we had 8 people but only needed 7. So he looked through our name list and picked the person at the bottom of the list (alphabetically) and it was a lady who was the ONLY person after me on the list @@ She then got to leave...lucky her lol
He then explained that he had to pick a Foreperson, this person would be the leader of the group and had to sign all the documents. He looked on the list again and picked the 2nd to the last person....which was ME! Omg I just about died, I did NOT want to be the Foreperson...little meek, quiet ole me ...be the leader of a group?? I was terrified!
We then were lead into the jury room right off the court. One by one different police officers came in to present their cases to us. They were from all different areas of the law...drugs, theft, homicide, investigator, regular cop.....each person had a stack of cases they had to present.
They had to read over the police report and evidence and we had to decide if it should move on to trial. I then had to sign all the papers...ended up being 160 indictments that I had to sign...my hand hurt when were done lol
The very first person who came in the room was an Investigator. He had to read us 2 different cases of female abduction...same guy but 2 different girls. This was graphic detail that I really didn't need to hear. I think it shocked us all cause it was right in the beginning. They were long reports and he read it word for word (shudder). Of course when he was done were like "um yeah of course it needs to go to trial"....well I think it said he admitted to it as well so it was a no brainer.
In fact we ended up passing all of the cases, they were all very cut and dry. None of them were as bad as the first one which is good. But there were a lot of drug cases, a few murders but not graphic mainly punk kids with guns and fights. I guess our little city of Hampton isn't that bad lol I would be scared to do that in a bigger city...I can only imagine the stuff you'd have to listen to =( One girl asked the Homicide cop how often he has to deal with murders and he said it wasn't that often. He said Newport news was worse! Made me feel better lol No offense to all those NN people but made me happy to live in Hampton...especially when everyone thinks Hampton is crappy lol
After we had went through all the cases it was just about 1130am....we went through it fast! We sat and waited to get called back into the courtroom. Come to find out the Judge forgot we were in there and he went to lunch @@ lol He got called back and then dismissed us. I was home before 1230!
So although I had been dreading my Jury Duty it turned out to be very interesting. I learned a lot about the legal system...as well as drug lingo lol like that will come in handy.
Definitely worth those few hours of my time and the 30bucks i'll get lol
