Last month, I got a summons. County Superior Court. That's where all the interesting cases are.

I filled out the questionnaire (a poorly assembled web form). I said I was eligible and able to serve.

Last week, I got assigned to the pool for a trial. Criminal. The trial is expected to run four weeks.

A couple days ago, I filled out a more detailed questionnaire. One question was about where I get my news. I put down all the usual bleedin' heart librul sources like CNN, BBC, and HuffPo.

Today I got the link for voir dire. Next Thursday. They are doing them in small batches over Zoom, starting on Monday.

They may have seated a full jury by then. I may get excused for cause (I can't think of a cause). I could get excused on a peremptory challenge any time up to when they have seated a full jury.

Or I could actually serve.


I have served on three juries.

First one was pled out on the first day of trial.

Second one lasted four weeks and I was an alternate, so I didn't get to deliberate.

Third one lasted three days -- the judge said it should have been three hours -- and I was an alternate.


The best sandwich shop in Seattle was three blocks from the courthouse. They baked dozens of loaves of fresh bread and roasted a few turkeys every day. They closed a couple years ago. There is a new place two blocks from the courthouse that serves piroshky. I want to try it. And the courthouse is a ten minute walk from all of the good Asian restaurants.

I can walk two blocks from my house and get the bus downtown. The bus stop is a block from the courthouse. The bus stop to come home is two blocks down the hill from that.


I could handle this.

I was called as an alternate a few weeks ago. There was a number to call the evening before - I wasn't needed...

To avoid jury duty carry three magazines into the courtroom. Make them visible

!. Easy Rider
2. Soldier of Fortune
3. High Times

You will be out of there in short order.

I have no reason to avoid serving.

I hope you make it!

I got to sit in the jury room for 5 hours one day this summer. Then they didn’t need any more jurors, and sent us home. But I had a nice lunch at the hip Vietnamese place while I was downtown.

I think it would be interesting to sit on a jury, but I haven’t been chosen yet.

I've been summonsed maybe 5 times, but have only made it to voir dire once, where I wasn't chosen.

I view it as my civic duty, and tend to show up. Most places have decent wifi, I bring a laptop and get work done. It's not fabulous, but it's really not bad.

That said, my dad served on a jury trying someone for a murder. The trial was about a week long and really upsetting for all the jurors. They ended up convicting the guy.

quote:

...really upsetting for all the jurors.

Well, I wasn't going to recount the story, but....


The trial I served on in 1995 was first degree murder. A 20-ish college student was murdered in the apartment she was renting from friends. The defendant/convict lived in the apartment one floor down and across the landing. We know she was raped and we know she was murdered, but we don't know which of those happened first.

The only hard physical evidence was the defendant's handprints in her blood on the bedsheet. It was a bit groundbreaking in the use of image processing software to get the fingerprints to stand out amid the weave of the fabric. The prosecution demonstrated the steps of applying the image filters in small steps so that it was clear that it was still the same image but with the weave gradually removed.

The case was featured on at least two TV shows.

The trial lasted four weeks. Deliberation took less than two days. He was found guilty. He was sentenced in January 1996 to 26 years. That means he should be out now.

But I was one of two alternates, which I had known from the outset, so I didn't have the emotional closure of deliberating. Several months after the trial the jurors got a letter from the court offering a counseling session. I had already gone to a few weeks with a counselor to get past the initial emotional trauma.

Still, I see jury duty as a civic duty and I am willing to serve again.


I did serve on another trial a few years later. It was a DUI. The trial was a circus. I could have done a better job than either the defense or prosecution. The two prosecutors were just out of school and fumbling their way through. The defense attorney looked like the kind that advertises on late-night TV. The trial lasted three days. Again, I was an alternate, but in this case, I didn't know until the trial was over. I had dinner with one of the other jurors and she said they convicted the guy. She said that at the end, the judge said that a DUI case should take three hours, not three days.

Apparently, a year earlier someone had contested the calibration and certification process for the breathalyzers the State Patrol used, and breathalyzer readings were declared inadmissible for several years before and after.


Mrs pj is irritated. The only time she's ever been called was after she'd moved to a different state and her previous state had not updated their voter rolls.

Well, excuse me!

I was all set to do voir dire by zoom on Thursday. The session was to start at 1:30, but they asked us to be online by 1:00 to do sound check and to replace our names with juror numbers.

At noon, I got an e-mail saying that considering my responses to the questionnaire, I had been excused. Either the prosecution dismissed me on a peremptory challenge because I am too librul or the defense dismissed me on a peremptory because of my answers to the questions about guns.

Having been excused, I was now free to look up the case. It is assault with a deadly weapon (a gun, I assume). The defendant has a substantial criminal record. Seven years ago he was charged with first-degree murder in a shooting that killed two people (one apparently was not an intended victim). He was released after a year because the prosecutor's office felt they did not have an air-tight case even though everyone was sure he did it.

So, I'm fine with not having to serve on that trial. It sounds messy. But I would have been fine with serving, as well.


One of these days, I'm going to take the bus downtown and try that new Russian cafe.

No excuse, you’re excused!

Sounds like a prince of a guy.

So, what do I get in the mail yesterday?

Another summons for jury duty. This time in County District Court.

Read somewhere that once you are on the list, your name will keep coming up for a while.
More jurors like you are needed.