January 30, 2004
Jury Duty
Back in December I got a summons from the Sheriff telling me to report for Jury Duty in early January. I did, and sat in the courtroom for three or four hours drinking the Queen's coffee, reading a back-issue of The Walrus (coincidentally containing an article about the International Criminal Court) and waiting for my number to be called. It wasn't, so I went home with a slight caffeine buzz and orders to return later that month for another jury selection. This was a duplicate of my previous Jury Duty experience many years ago, where I sat through two jury selections and didn't have my number come up once. I don't ever win the lottery either, so it was no surprise.
During the next session, we were an hour or so into the process again, and I was working out some jokes to tell my friends about my not getting chosen again when all of a sudden I heard my number. The next thing I knew, I was being affirmed as a witness, and moments later, as a juror and as a "triar", which is a person who has a role in certain kinds of jury selection in Canada. Bang! I was on a jury. I was instructed to show up the next week for the trial.
Frankly, I was pleased. Life's been a little dull recently, so this was going to be an interesting change of pace. Of course, when you tell someone that you're on a jury duty, their first reaction is virtually always "you should have done this to get out of it", usually followed by a wardrobe suggestion, or some lie or exaggeration you could tell the judge that would get you excused. I suspect that those tricks would work, but the legal system probably benefits: If you're willing to lie to a judge to get out of jury duty, then you probably aren't going to make an exemplary juror.
Now that I'm on the jury, I'm eager both for the trial to start and for the whole experience to be over; I'm not very good at waiting. The next step is to actually get to the courthouse, but this has been proving more difficult that I expected. The day before I was instructed to appear, I got a call from the Sheriff moving the date back. That worked out for me, because I had some work to finish up. Again today, I got another call moving the date back again. At this rate, the whole trial experience could take much longer than I expected. I hope not too long. We've got a baby due in April.
Posted by Brent Marykuca at January 30, 2004 12:51 PM