Federal Duty
As usual, my lack of posts doesn’t mean a lack of active. One of the many things that has gone on this week is that I finally reported for Federal Jury Duty.
I had been “on call” all month, and I thought I was going to never have to report. Alas, I got a letter last Thursday asking me to report to the Federal Courthouse on Monday. Since it’s the law and everything, I did.
The courthouse is in downtown Omaha, but the Feds are nice enough to give you a parking permit at the nearest parking garage. I reported to the “Jury Waiting Room” (my name, not theirs) and it was nicer than I thought. They had tables and chairs setup, with coffee and donuts and CNN on TV. At 8:15am, someone got up and gave us an overview for the day. The jury selection was supposed to be over by noon, and then the rest of us were free to go. Since there were 42 of us, and only thirteen called for the jury, our chances of going home early were quite good. Well, that was a wrong assumption.
The lady talking said that we would be going in front of the judge to start the process in fifteen minutes. An hour later, someone else stood up, and said it would be another fifteen minutes. Forty-five minutes after that, they said it would be yet another fifteen minutes. And they were right this time — so at 10:30am, we went in front of the judge.
Now, a Federal courtroom is a nice place — comfortable chairs, nice carpet, some very nice mahogany tables with brass fittings, you name it. They did not waste taxpayers money on it! Well, the judge was a pretty nice guy and told us what was expected of us and how long the case would take (at least the rest of the week!), etc. Then they seated us in their order and placed us where all the attorneys could see us. Then they told us about the case — there were two sets of charges for two different defendants, and they were being tried together! So there were three attorneys instead of two. And, you guessed it — the jury selection took much longer than they were supposed to! We just finished with the prosecutor at noon and then the first defense attorney came after us when we got back at 1:30pm! When they were both done, the judge asked us to stay in the courtroom while the attorneys finished their selections. A half hour passed when the judge said, “Well, if these attorneys don’t know what you look like by now, there is something wrong! You are free to wait outside the courtroom. We are in recess!” Yeah, he was kinda mad.
Well, at the end, I wasn’t chosen. The case would have been interesting, but not interesting enough to spend a whole week on it!