So without further ado: Friday, Oct. 21, 2005
Here's how jury duty went. On Tuesday, I go in and they call us into the courtroom for possible duty on a 6-8 week triple homicide trial. The guy is pleading not guilty, and not guilty by reason of insanity, which I think means, "I didn't do it, and besides, I was crazy when I did it."
So they give us a 30 page questionnaire to fill out and send us home, telling us to come back Friday. I load up my questionnaire with answers about how I WILL NOT vote for the death penalty even though the guy killed 3 people and wounded a fourth.
Friday we go back into the court room and the judge says, "Is there anyone on the panel who will not vote for the death penalty under any circumstances?" and 4 of us raise our hands and are questioned at length about our reasons. The prosecutor wants to know how long we've been thinking about this question, and I'm pretty sure that, "Since Tuesday afternoon" is the wrong answer. After convincing everyone that we are really truly never never never going to vote the death penalty, the 4 of us are dismissed. And it only took two missed days of work.
This isn't my only jury duty story. For example there's the one where under questioning I equated pot smokers with cop killers (as long as there's a war on drugs, it will be so). The defense attorney respectfully dismissed me. The prosecutor looked a little sad about that.
So, what's your best jury duty story?
