"I'd rather NOT Judge"

Yesterday was the last day, finally, of my 6 month jury duty. No. I haven't been sitting ON a jury for 6 months; just one day each month (the first friday) I had to go to the circuit court in case I was picked AS a jurior. Oddly enough, in all that time, I was never picked. Surprizing, because the odds were against me. In circuit court they pick 12 juriors, then from that 12, they pick 6. Usually there's at least 2 trials at a time, so there's 2 juries picked; looks like I'd been on at least one of them.

Not that I'm complaining, and not that I don't want to do my civic duty, but those 6 days having to attend court were pretty much just a waste of time. For one thing, circuit court wasn't even in session every time. Two different months I was informed by a court officer that the cases had been solved OUT of court, so really, I just went there in July, August, October and December. Another odd thing was, that there was only one criminal trial and all the other were competency hearings. One was for an 102 year old woman, who was the oldest person ever to have such a trial in our county.(All competency hearings must be tried by jury.) Another trial that was odd, was one today, where the state was wanting to declare someone uncompetent and "take care of them" against the families wishes to have him at home where they could do so. In all hearings of this sort, the trial is confidential, so everyone else MUST leave the courtroom if they aren't part of the trial.

And since I didn't get picked any time, after jury selection was done, I was free to leave which was around 10:30 Am each time (court started at 9AM), which was just enough to pretty much ruin your day, especially when then I had to go on to work until 5:30 PM each time.

And yesterday, right here at Christmas time, was especially bad for me. getting up early, going to court, then rushing to work to "try" to get everything done and the store stock prepared for weekend customers. On top of this, about a mile from the court's location I had a blowout. I mean a really BIG one! The hole in the tire was big enough to stick my fist through. I got it fixed tho' and still got there with 10 minutes to spare.

But now that's over with at least for a year and I won't have to worry about getting picked for jury duty again for a while; you can only serve one time in 12 months in the same county. That's good. I think I'd enjoyed this whole deal a lot better had I actually gotten picked to serve (and it'd been a nice "juicy" criminal offence).