Top Ten Things I've learned from Jury Duty...

Top Ten Things I've learned from jury duty:

1.  Always assume you will be spending the rest of your life there and come prepared.  Bring books, water, cough drops, tylenol, snacks, feminine products, tissues and enough mints to offer to every fellow juror.  And make arrangements for the care of your children for the next year or so.  Do not foolishly think you will be home in an hour or so like I did.  Also, double the length of time the Judge expects the Trial to last.

2.  You will learn more about the members of your community in one hour of jury selection than in 10 years of living near them.  

3.  Being a parent complicates things.  Everyone has a mother that loves them and it will make it hard.  Especially because you can probably find both mothers in the courtroom, and you will see the pain in their eyes. 

4.  There will be at least 2 jury members who are convinced the police didn't do a good enough job investigating because they didn't do it "Like the way they do on CSI".

5.  You will be convinced that everybody must be a smoker on the jury.  Have those mints easily accessible for all.

6.  Without fail, the goriest of photos will be shown shortly after lunch.

7.  Somehow, sitting very still in a chair for 8hrs makes you tired. 

8.  At some point with the mileage reimbursements, catered lunch and candid witnesses you will think that jury duty isn't so bad after all!   Then you will do the math and realized they are paying you $5/hr of your own (tax paying) money.

9. You will begin to get seriously pissed about attorneys getting fixated on details like exact times, distances, or number of people present and you may fantasize about beating them with a ruler. 

10.  Automatically double the number of alcoholic beverages a witness claims to have consumed.  Except for the guy that admits to drinking "about 18" beers, he's probably right on. 

11.  This top ten has an extra special item for my favorite thing I learned from one of the more entertaining witnesses:  Busch beer only has five ingredients. 

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Overall Jury duty wasn't as bad as I expected.  The case (which I am allowed to talk about now) involved a man charged with felonious assault for hitting another guy with a rock (and causing quite extensive facial injuries).  The defendant was 19 and about half the size of 27 year old victim that was running after him, so we found him not guilty (due to self defense). 

The county we live in is rural and blue collar, so I guess I shouldn't have been surprised to see that nearly every juror showed up for Court each day wearing jeans & sweat shirts, but I was since it was specifically addressed in the Juror Information that jeans should not be worn!  Ah well. 

Some of the witnesses were hilarious and about half of the jurors had pretty good senses of humor, so that definitely helped make it quite an experience.  I even wanted to be friends with one juror, but he was a dude so there didn't seem like any appropriate way to initiate that.