Jury Duty
Submitted by BlackJaw on Fri, 10/26/2007 - 09:54.
Why is it I don't get regular jury summons? Why do I only get summons for giant criminal cases with special jury needs? There must be 255 people here for this case of 'significance' when they don't bring people in on Fridays normaly.
The deal...
I spent about 3 hours at the Kent Regional Justice Center. Like the hundreds of others summoned that day, I had a special summons that didn't let me reschedule. In fact I spent the day next to a guy with recent emergency dental work who was on various painkillers, and I wasn't the only sick guy there either.
The plan was apparently to break us up into groups of 50 and begin slowing working through the survey info etc.
And the big case? One of the Whitehead murder trails (http://www.komotv.com/news/archive/4190236.html)... hence the large applicant pool and the prospective 3-6 week trial.
The good news (for us) was that some recent changes in the evidence was going to result in the trail being pushed back 2-3 weeks, so all 255-300 of us got let go. With no other trails going on, and with no interest in flooding the courts with 300 extra people on Monday, they simply let us all walk out.
Sure it wasted the day, but at least I didn't end up in a nasty highly public murder trail or (like last time) spend 3 days not in getting picked for a nasty public murder trail.
-- BlackJaw