all rise.

justice = served.

for those of you who have not had the pleasure of serving on a jury, please do not read this post! i don't want to 'ruin the surprise' for you when your day of service eventually comes.

i have been summoned for jury duty several times, we'll call it my good fortune. in fact, the frequency with which i am 'randomly selected' is nearly enough to form a weak, yet totally spooky, conspiracy theory. unlike my previous summons, this time i didn't have a 'legitimate exemption' and therefore i dutifully answered the call to service. and, because i'm super lucky, i was selected for the jury. fyi: if you would like to avoid actually being selected for a jury i would recommend thinking of the most crazytown response you can dream up and then reciting said response regardless of the question asked. it's a technique i've seen used with great success. i'm not exactly sure how attorneys decide which jurors to choose. i'd like to think, per my being selected, that they pick the brightest and most well-rounded candidates. i now know, per this experience, that is not necessarily the case.

as for the actual trial... it was less a time to kill, more construction engineering lecture. the case was about levee construction on duck-hunting leases; slightly less intense, even for the avid sportsman. turns out, they save the 'good-stuff' for jury deliberation.

there's always one. far be it for me, as a juror, to deny any other juror their right to be ridiculous... but o.m.g! this one must have slipped through the virtually fail-proof 'crazytown response' filtering method. i'll spare you the gory/hilarious details but somewhere between his telling another juror he would "agree with her if she bought him a hamburger" and his entertaining and spontaneously fabricated expertise in the area of levee construction, i started looking for the hidden camera and ashton.

things i wish i knew yesterday:
1. the gavel is apparently optional. disappointing.
2. that whole 'swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth...' bit is a lot scarier in real life than on tv.
3. jury duty is a lot like waiting in a voting line, kind of an inconvenience but a right i am proud to exercise.
4. let the record reflect, following my service as the trier of fact in proceedings of the 2nd 25th judicial district court, inter alia, it is my intent hence forth to intermingle legalese in layman tête-à-tête without regard for actual meaning or appropriateness!!