I arrived on time and entered the jury pool room. The man in front of me had not filled out his questionnaire properly so the bailiff asked him if he had ever been convicted of a felony. He replied, "yeah, assault and battery, driving without a license, and domestic abuse." Great - I'm in a jury pool with a violent criminal.
So I'm waiting waiting waiting in the room and of course I'm in the first group called to a courtroom. The charges against the defendant were very very serious and the minute the judge explained them one of the jurors burst into tears. Needless to say, she was excused. Meanwhile I'm thinking, "Oh great the first time I'm called and there's a big time case that will probably last days." So they're excusing juror after juror but I'm more focused on the fact that the guy behind me keeps making these gagging noises like he's about to vomit and I was just a bit concerned about being puked on. Not just gagging but panting afterwards and gasping "oh God." For Chrissake man, if you're that sick leave! Does no one else hear that?!
Luckily, I managed to keep my snide comments to myself... mostly. I DID respond to the charges read with "are you fucking kidding me?!" to the woman next to me. BUT when the judge asked if there was anything about the appearance of the defendant, who was an African American, that would make anyone unable to be unbiased and a single juror raised their card I resisted the urge to declare "well, we know who the racist in the room is!"
I was number 58 and when they reached 40 without having filled the jury I was getting antsy, but juror number 40 was the last one luckily for me... not so much for her. I hope she didn't have any plans for this week. We were heading back to the pool room to be sorted for another trial when we were informed we could go. It was like a bunch of kids getting out of school early. People were actually running down the stairs and I could be mistaken but I could swear I heard some cheering.
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