"You can't be on this jury -- I'm a journalist!"

When the Red Giant finally looked up from his laptop and registered what I told him about the case, his eyes got big. "We talked about that when he got kicked off the water board! You know too much about this case. You can't qualify for this jury, hon."

I shrugged. I rejected out-of-hand that I couldn't be an objective juror because he'd written a story about a raucous water board meeting. Truth is, I hadn't allowed the details to take up permanent residence in my brain. The Red Giant writes a lot of stories, full of technical detail, and I often read them for egregious grammar errors. But I don't retain what I've read. So, I walked, open-hearted, forward into the process.

The jury duty notice

I opened the envelope from the Jury Commissioner and groaned. I was supposed to report to the superior court in the county seat, an hour-and-a half drive away. Oh, well, I thought, all the other times I had called the night before and didn't have to go.

This time was different. I called on Sunday night and heard the recording say, "All groups must report." Oh, well, a day off from work.

There were at least a hundred of us in the jury room. We heard a bare-bones summary of the case, and immediately my interest was piqued. We were handed a 15-page questionnaire to weed out people with obvious biases. The questions were remarkable: What did we like to read? Did we watch crime dramas on TV? Did we know any of a list of about 100 people involved in the case? Did we know anything about the case? If so, where did we learn it?

For some reason, more than anything, I wanted to find out what this process was like, so I wanted to get past the first elimination round. Was anyone in my household involved in the media? This one I admit to parsing. I had lived with a journalist for a few years, and had just moved into my own place in January. There are probably a few lawyers and judges among my ancestors, and I admit to enjoying occasional hair-splitting. This would come back to haunt me.

Sumary of this summer's trial

Rogers trial summary


The link above provides a really good summary of the trial on which I spent 3 weeks as a juror this summer.

Following posts are my takes on the experience.

Falstaff has a new home!

A Bay Area couple took him for a test-drive one weekend, and now he's theirs! Lydia at the rescue group said they have questions for me, and I said to send them my email address, but so far I haven't heard. I'm happy someone took him. I'd like to think Frank and I and his mother filed some of Falstaff's rough edges down.

a photo of the edge of the earth