Wednesday, October 03, 2007

Jury duty

My first time chosen.

My blogging will occur in the afternoon and evening rather than throughout the day.

I loved the fact the judge held up a copy of the Constitution and talked about our right to counsel, our right to face our accusers, our right to know the charges, our right of presumed innocence.

Thank you, your Honor!

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hurry Back, Ellroon - your audiance awaits!

Regards,

Tengrain

ellroon said...

I'm not gone, just distracted!

Steve Bates said...

Welcome to my world. I get called, quite literally, twice as often as anyone else. Long story short: I'm on the rolls twice, middle-initial vs. middle-name, and have been informed repeatedly that their computer system is too fucking stupid to rectify the situation, unless I'm willing to change either my driver's license or my voter registration. Yeah, right, as if.

On the whole, I enjoy jury duty. But because most cases in Harris County, TX are drug-related, I am never chosen. I just can't swear to impose 20-to-life on someone for their third offense selling marijuana, even though I've never been a user.

Well, actually, there was that one murder case; that cost me two days of my life because that's how long it took them to ascertain that I am not "death-qualified" ... wonderful phrase, isn't it?

Here's hoping you draw (drew?) a traffic violation case. Enjoy!

Sorghum Crow said...

Ellroon, have fun. I hope you will recuse yourself from any cases involving squirrels.

I've been called twice. Once I was excused from a whiplash case, mainly because I had a college education and had taken physics, oooh science.

The next time, I was seated on a jury for a workplace injury appeal, which consisted of reading the court record of the previous trial. Dull. Dull. Dull.

ellroon said...

I get to talk about it when it's done, hopefully next week.

I'd immediately yell 'guilty!' or 'immediate death penalty!' if the case involved squirrels or gophers....

Damned rodents!

Anonymous said...

It's worth mentioning, in case you don't already know, jurors cannot be punished for their verdicts. If you happen to have a prosecution of someone where they are accused of a crime that you believe they are proven guilty of according to the facts, but you do not agree with the law, you can vote to acquit. This should not be done lightly.

ellroon said...

Thanks, whig. Doesn't look like it will be that kind of trial, but it's good to know.