Deviation Actions
All right, so I am about halfway through jury duty and it looks like I might get through jury duty without having sat on a single jury. Here is my account of my experience.
The first morning I got up at the lovely young hour of 6AM. I was pretty tired. One of the first things I did was get my Voltage out of the fridge and take a sip. I got ready to go and left the house at just after 7. I left myself plenty of time to get there in case the traffic was bad, but at that hour of the morning, there’s no one out. I made it downtown without a problem and parked as high up as I could in the parking deck, even higher than the sheriff cars and unmarked police cars. They were all Ford Taurus. Lol. Now I will be suspicious whenever I see a Taurus.
So I walked into the courthouse and it didn’t take long to get through security. They ran my bag through the scanner and took my pepper spray, then put me through the metal detector. Every single person set it off. Of course my bra set it off, but they gave me no issues. They scanned me with the wand and let me on through. I followed an older woman up the stairs since she seemed to know where she was going. We got in line and they handed everyone some paperwork to fill out and assigned us numbers.
I walked into the jury room and there were couches lining the walls and at least a hundred kid desks crammed very close together in the room. I sat at one and didn’t take long to fill out the paperwork. I got to skip anything that said ‘spouse’ on it, since that doesn’t apply to me. When I was done I took out my fill-in book and made small talk with the woman beside me who was working on crosswords. She told me she was a social worker with ICE. I was impressed. That’s pretty official.
After a while a guy named Rob came in and stood at the podium to start explaining things. He gave his speech and the judge still wasn’t there, so he started rambling to fill the time. He told us about an older judge who had retired. I think his name was Price. He told us that they used to pay 25 cents a mile and 20$ a day, and how they had reduced it to 5 cents a mile and 10$ a day due to budget cuts. He also told us that 18 of us were going to be chosen at random to be on the grand jury, which would meet 3 week in the next month or two, and he gave us the dates. When the district attorney got there she made a speech, mainly about how much she wanted jury duty and lamented that she had never been called. LOL.
Finally the judge showed up, but almost as soon as he walked to the podium and put his phone down on the desk it started vibrating. The microphone made it very loud. He laughed and apologized, saying that the reason he was late was the alarm had been triggered at his house and he was trying to sort it out with the alarm company. He pulled out the computer and started calling out the names for grand jury.
A little after halfway, he called my name. My reaction was a slightly loud “Oh my God, you have got to be kidding me.” Several people laughed. I stood there thinking FML… So once he had finished calling all 18 names, he asked if there was anyone who had a conflict with the dates provided. My hand shot up the fastest and he called me forward to give my reason. I just told him tearfully that the last week was the one that my mom and I were going on vacation and we had already paid and it was non-refundable. He said he’d let me out and I went to sit back down. The lady from ICE leaned over to me and asked “Do you feel better now?” I just nodded and tried to get my heart rate to return to normal. I had just about had a panic attack when he said my name.
So all in all, he let 5 of us out and called more names to replace us. One of the women he called wasn’t there, and she he issued a warrant for her. On the last name he called two women stood up, so we had to sort out that issue. Both women had the same first and middle names and the last names were almost the same: Ware and Ward. Ward was told to sit down, and she looked relieved. So he called one more name, and they went off to wherever grand juries go. The remaining 139 of us were arranged into 20 panels of 7 people each. I was put on panel 8.
They all left the jury room and we were told to wait for further instructions. I took out my book and started reading. They came in and dismissed panels 17-20, saying their case had pled out. A few minutes later 13-16 were told their case pled out and they could leave. The lady from ICE was on 13, so she told me to have a good day and left.
I went back to my book and waited and waited and waited, and finally when all the other groups had been called away or dismissed, panels 5-8 were called to Judge Griffin’s court, the same judge from before. We started jury selection on a murder case. One of the ladies beside me, Millie something, a retired school board lady, mentioned how amazing it was that my first time on jury duty and I got a murder case. The prosecutor got to ask us questions and then the defense attorney got his turn. The whole question and answer thing took quite a while. But that time it was almost 1 and I was STARVING. The judge told us to go back to the jury room and they would hash out who they wanted.
About 20 minutes after that, they told us to just go ahead and go to lunch and they would have their answer by the time we got back. We were told to be in the jury room by 2:30. I rushed around trying to get people to eat lunch with me since I didn’t want to walk around that neighborhood by myself. Everyone I asked was going home for lunch, and I ended up alone anyway. I caught up to one girl just outside the court house after chasing her down about 3 flights of stairs and a half a city block and asked her to lunch. She said she was going home, but asked me suddenly if I remembered her. I told her no, but then she said her name. Katie Vega. I remember her immediately, but she looks like a completely different person now. I haven’t seen her since I was 12, in sixth grade homeroom. She had glasses, curly black hair, and was a skinny rail back then. Now she has dyed and straightened her hair, wears contacts, and has put on quite a few pounds. It’s no wonder I didn’t recognize her.
So, I was told by both my parents that I should go to Scott Street Deli, so I walked up the street past the courthouse thinking it was that way. I was wrong. I ducked into a run-down library and asked directions from the clerk. She told me to go down to Scott Street and take a right. I followed her instructions, but was not so sure when I saw Hull Street. Hull Street is where 60% of the murders happen in Montgomery, so I was not sure I wanted to be in that part of town, especially alone. I asked a girl that was loitering at a construction site/apartment complex and she looked it up on her phone. She told me that it was just past Hull Street on the right side of Scott Street. I cautiously walked past the staring construction workers and a random garbage truck that was not moving. I got to the deli and it said grocery on the outside. I thought she had got it wrong and was about to turn around when I saw the small sign reading ‘deli.’
I ducked in and it smelled good, like freshly baked bread. A little creepy with the bars on the windows and door. I went up to the counter and ordered. The lady asked me what I wanted on my salad and made it for me, then I went across to pay. I laid my food down at one of two empty tables when two women from panels 5-8 called that I could sit at their table if I wanted. I joined them and realized that I had forgotten to get a drink, so I did that, paid, and sat down to eat. They were almost finished, but they didn’t mind waiting while I ate since we had a while and they were enjoying the AC.
When I finally finished my salad I was positively stuffed and we started the walk back to the courthouse. I felt a lot safer now that I wasn’t by myself. At one point I ran across the street before them and got separated by a sudden onslaught of traffic down Hull Street. When they finally got over to the other side one of the joked that I was definitely the youngest of the jurors. That was almost true, since Katie Vega and I tied for youngest. It was kind of weird being around so many people who were older than me. I felt a little out of place.
So after we got back we sat around the jury room till just about 3. While we were waiting, a woman 3 rows behind got my attention and asked me where I worked. I told her Mathnasium. She said that one of her students was a tutor and gave me her name. I didn’t know the girl, but we talked for a few minutes. Then we were called back into the courtroom. We had to wait outside for a few minutes and I talked to the woman again. She was laughing about my “you’ve got to be kidding me” comment. I told her I didn’t realize it had been so loud. She said she had teacher ears. She apparently teaches Latin at LAMP and I told her how much I had enjoyed Latin at ACA.
We got called into the courtroom and as soon as we filed in and sat down, the judge explained that they had eliminated too many jurors from our pool and that they didn’t have enough left for a jury. We were all dismissed. I happily walked down the stairs and picked up my pepper spray from security before leaving and walking to the parking deck. I hit the elevator button and waited and waited and waited. I said it was there but the doors never opened. Finally I gave up and walked up the 10 flights of stairs to my car in 98 degree heat. Needless to say, I was out of breath and sweating profusely by the time I got to my car.
When I got home I walked in and the first thing I did was get a Tervis full of water and down the entire thing in a short time. I ended up drinking 3 of them that day. After dinner I looked up the case and found a short article saying that the defendant had skipped bail the first trial and this was his second. It just said that he had killed the victim during an argument. There was an article in the paper this morning about it that gives a little more information. Here it is:
www.montgomeryadvertiser.com/s…
Mom looked at the picture of the guy and asked me if that was what he looked like in court. In short, no. He had had his hair done, he was clean-shaven, and wearing nice fancy clothes. He looked nothing like his picture in the paper. She just shrugged and said “typical.”
Well, I have been dismissed every day since that first day, and tomorrow is no exception. The website says that all jurors who are not already on a case will be excused Thursday and Friday. I’ll keep checking back, but I think I am done with jury duty. An interesting week off work I guess.
Later.
Rachel