Jury Duty

I received a jury summons about a month ago. So last Monday I took the light-rail downtown to the county courthouse.

Here's what happened:

I entered a room a little before 8:30 and sat in a room with about 500 other people. There were a bunch of chairs all facing the same directions, similar to a church. There was some jury comissioner who gave us a short little statement about why we were there (0ver a microphone) and then she played a video about jury duty for all of us to watch. After the video was over she called about 30 numbers at a time for each courtroom that needed jurors (we were all assigned a juror number). She did this about three times until the room was getting kind of sparce. There was a lull in the jury calls soI went and got myself cappucino from a machine in the back of the room for 50 cents which was a bad idea because the commisioner said if we left the room and were called during a time she said we might be called we might be serviced with a warrant for "non-compliance"... so of course I was paranoid about leaving the room. I left and went to the bathroom anyway and ended up not getting in to trouble... whew! Another 50-100 people's number were called. I sat. I waited. I slept for about 30 minutes to an hour... not sure how long. Another 30 people were called. It got to the point where there were only 15 people left. People started coming back to the room because they were kicked out as potential jurors. I was the last juror called I think. We (all the jurors called) all went out in the hall with our jury associate or whatever you call them. She did a roll call and I was the last name called again. She then ushered us down to the 1st floor. The jury associate then had us line up in a single file line as she called our names. She said it was completely random but I was called last again as I had been before and stood at the end of the line. We walked in to the court room. The first 12 people sat in the jury seats and the rest of us (the overflow) sat in some side seats. The judge seat was empty. The judges last name was Gonzales or something to that effect. I was surprised for some stupid reason that it was a very attractive women who walked out and sat in the Judges seat. She comenced asking each and every juror personal questions and making small talk. It reminded of the first day of school when your new teacher tries and "get to know all of you". The judge seemed rather charismatic. There was conversation of what your favorite t.v. show was.... Whether or not you thought you would be biased... If you knew or had family that were police officers.

There were actually a lot of interesting characters. One guy was a research scientist who was an expert on capital punishment and had gone to a few court hearings to testify against the electric chair. The guy was an anesthesioligist so he was actually against the electric chair and "for" lethal injections. Sort of like job security work... I guess. There was the director of Pharmacy for the University of Colorado... or something to that effect. There was a girl who worked on a domestic abuse hotline for 5 years which was interesting because this court hearing was about domestic abuse along with other things.

Anyway, I wasn't even considered or questioned because I was just a back up juror for the potential jurors. So once the jurors were picked they said I was free to go so I ran out of there lickity split and got some paper signed by the clerk. After that I went and pounded down a fajita burrito at Chipotle's on the 16th street mall and then took the train back home. The end.