Ahhh, the joys of helping out the American Justice system.
Did mine a while back, ended up getting dismissed totally by lunchtime. Nothing like sitting in a room with no activity to bolster you. Not particularly aided by the Head Bureaucrat In Charge informing us that our mere presence doing nothing had helped settle several cases that might have been decided by a jury of peers instead be handled through out-of-court deals.
Yeah, last time I had jury duty, at one point around 11:00am, they called out 40 of us by name and said that we were going to a civil courtroom (across the street in City Hall, rather than criminal court which was in our building). As soon as we were led out of the jury room through the exit closer to the outdoors, we were essentially told, "Just kidding!" Apparently that's a trick they do in order to dismiss some potential jurors without everyone left getting jealous. I got my $9 check and got to leave.
Sheesh. I got called for two panels, one for criminal, one for civil. For the civil case I got to raise my hand to the questions "Are you familiar with the Judge" and "Are you familiar with defense counsel." I should have raised my hand to "Are you familiar with plaintiff's counsel" but I didn't realized I recognized their name until after the question had passed. You can be sure I cleared that one up when they interviewed my one-on-one.
They managed to put me on one panel, criminal... burglary/assault... I was even one of the first twelve up, not having known nobody... but I got out since I had vacation. Then I got back, they'd sent everyone to lunch and said "Eh, you were on a panel. Go here and they'll dismiss you."
Our checks get mailed, which is funny when you realize that it's an additional 6% of the check that went into postage. Five big dollars. Woo.
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Did mine a while back, ended up getting dismissed totally by lunchtime. Nothing like sitting in a room with no activity to bolster you. Not particularly aided by the Head Bureaucrat In Charge informing us that our mere presence doing nothing had helped settle several cases that might have been decided by a jury of peers instead be handled through out-of-court deals.
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Amazingly, they didn't pick me for that panel ;-)
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Our checks get mailed, which is funny when you realize that it's an additional 6% of the check that went into postage. Five big dollars. Woo.