Jury Duty
Not today, but I got the notice yesterday to come in next month. I’m hoping that it doesn’t echo my last experience with jury duty, which was almost exactly 11 years ago — and which ended up being an 8-week triple murder trial*, so I had to drop all of my classes at the university I’d just transferred to‡, and I swear, my back still feels those crappy jury box chairs.
Aside from the inconvenience (civic duty, I know) I do like jury duty, though. You interact with people that you might never meet in other circumstances. You end up with crazy stories to tell over dinner. You get to see a small part of the workings of our judicial system … and all of this is awesome fodder for writers.
So, have you ever had jury duty? What was the experience like? And did you end up with a great story — or just a story of how boring/awful it was?
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* We found him guilty of all three counts, and last year, the verdict was overturned because of the lead batch analysis used as part of the evidence. The lead batch stuff was never really a significant part of the evidence for us when we discussed it, but I doubt there will be a re-trial. The timeline established was a big part of the reason we found him guilty, and in the interim, the primary witness for the timeline (the victims’ landlady) has allegedly killed her husband. So, I’m guessing that her credibility on the stand might be just a wee bit damaged.
I recently saw the same lead batch analysis/overturned verdict used as a plot point in a TV show, though I can’t exactly recall which one. (CSI, probably. I keep hoping that it will be good again, but it fails me almost every episode. The only reason to watch now is in hopes that Katee Sackhoff’s detective character will be in it … and when is she going to get her own show? Someone out there, please. Do it.)
‡ Of course, this ended up being a really good thing. I had to take a transitional class in my first semester, and since my first semester ended up being in the spring, instead, I took the class in which my would-be-husband was the grad assistant. The day after finals, I sent him a drunken e-mail, and we were married six months later. All because of jury duty.
