My civic responsibility

I'm bearing down on my 38th birthday and have never been called to jury duty. My wife is an attorney and has been called twice in the seven years we've been married. I'm hoping I can at least get to my 40th without serving.

 

Bumping this one ...

My civic obligation ended yesterday, when we found the defendant guilty of 59 counts of various forms of fraud. The strangest parts of the whole 10 days was one, seeing my paper's courts reporter in the gallery every day and resisting every urge to wave hello to him and two, the few moments as the verdicts were read on each count. Talk about surreal. I couldn't even look at anyone in the courtroom except for the judge and the clerk, because all I thought was, "I have made a decision that drastically affects one person's life." We're not talking about one person bobbling a ball that allows the winning run to score - we're talking taking away a career and giving him a possible jail sentence. Sympathy wasn't a factor. During deliberations, it took a lot of critical/analytical thinking - more logos over ethos and pathos.

To reach the verdict, I sat in a 20x20 room for 12 hours with 11 other people, binders of evidence and testimony and temporarily lost any recollection of sun, fresh air, cell phone usage and e-mail.