January seems to be a very depressing month in Utah. The holidays are over. I'm back to work. It is COLD! There always seems to be an inversion over the city, etc. You get the picture. The government decided to spice things up for me and called me to jury duty. Here is the exciting details of my civic duty.
I drove to the courthouse in downtown Salt
Lake City to
report to jury duty. There were a lot of people called for duty that day. We were assigned to three different trials going on at the same time. I was assigned to trial three. The first trial group was released to go home
by 9:30 AM
and didn’t even have to go to a courtroom! (Those were the lucky ones!)
The second group had to fill out a questionnaire and then was taken to a
courtroom. My group of about 26 people
was led up to a courtroom last. We sat in the
juror seats while we were asked if we would be unbiased and then told about the
case. Then we were told that the
prosecution and defendant get to choose three jurors each. If we were closer to being the first juror,
we would be more likely to be chosen. Of course, I
was the first juror on the list so I was
selected to be a juror. (I should have
bought a lottery ticket that day since I was so lucky to be chosen!) Besides the five other jurors, the rest of the group
was released to leave.
I was grateful
there was only one witness and the defendant chose not to take the witness
stand. The defendant was being charged
with assault of an officer and disorderly conduct. The witness was the officer claiming he was
assaulted. He gave a good testimony. He was examined and cross examined. Since the defendant waived his chance to take
the stand, the court was adjourned to a lunch break of one hour. (I would have foregone the lunch break and
just got the case over!) I sat and
talked with my fellow jurors (not about the case!) for the hour in the cafeteria.
After lunch, we were read the instructions on
how to be a juror and what to do in deliberation. We were dismissed to deliberate and locked in a room. Gratefully the people who had strong opinions
agreed so the rest of us just went along with it. We did stay in the room long enough to get the free snacks they sent us. As soon as we had divvied up the snacks, we let the officer know we were done deliberating. We found the defendant guilty of disorderly
conduct but the prosecution did not prove without a reasonable doubt that the
defendant was guilty of assault of an officer so we found the defendant not
guilty of assault of an officer. I was done with jury duty about 2:15 PM.
All done with my civic duty for another three years. Nice!
