The Jury

About a month ago I was selected for jury duty. Not only did I have to report, but I ended up being selected as one of the eight to serve for a civil trial. As with most people, I was not necessarily looking forward to the idea of spending a week or two in court with complete strangers. But on the other hand, as someone who watches a lot of crime dramas on TV and movies I was also somewhat interested by the opportunity to experience these things in real life.

For the integrity of the judicial process, I am not going to get into what the trial was about, nor the results. For the purposes of this blog, they are inconsequential anyways. But what came of this experience for me were several things.

The first is that the jury process, for as much of an inconvenience as it is for most people, works. What I saw and was so impressed with was that eight people from all different backgrounds, ages, sexes, races, and careers could take the responsibility set upon us seriously, get along and work together, and also ultimately form just about the same opinions after seven days of testimony. This is all you can hope for if were to find yourself in the unfortunate situation of being in court yourself one day, to know that the people in charge of your fate are doing their best to do their job to the best of their ability.

The other thing I took out of this experience was that this group that was assembled because of it's apparent differences and balance ended up meshing so well. On the outside we couldnt' have been more different, but yet in the time we spent in the jury room while the judge and lawyers worked out issues (which was A LOT), we all became very close. We shared stories of our lives, our families, our jobs, our sports teams. Because we could not speak about the case until testimony was over, we had to talk about anything and everything else, which we did.Several people once we reached the end how if even just one person had been replaced how it could have potentially changed the entire dynamic and atmosphere, and this was very true.

Given all these things, the most important thing that came out of all this was that the jury system works. We were lucky to have been assigned to a judge and court reporter who were very well-natured and helpful, us jurors all got along well, and most of all we took the task given to us seriously. Not to mention, I don't think I am alone in feeling like I made some friends for life...