Jury Duty

 My heart sank when I received an email summoning me for jury duty April 10th-13th.  Ah!  Actually, I have always thought it would be interesting to serve on a jury, but not right now.  Our spring Keynote tour season started on April 10th.  We had two performances scheduled for Monday the 10th and two on Wednesday the 13th.  Ken and I also had temple appointments scheduled for the afternoon of the 13th and the morining of the 14th in Las Vegas temple.  The Cedar City temple was closed, so we planned to get four sessions done in Vegas, spending the night down there.  

I know it is never convenient to serve on a jury.  It is an interruption of life for everyone.  But the timing for me seemed particularly bad.

I filled out the questionaire and arrived on the 10th at 8:30am as instructed.  There were about 45 people in the room waiting.  After a long wait (I was to find that waiting was the order of the day.  I was so glad I brought a book to read), we were called out one by one to line up and walk down to the courtroom.  I was among the last 20 called.  In the courtroom were three officers, the accused and his counsel and two interpreters (he was Hispanic), the two lawyers for the state and two clerks.   The accused was on trial for aggravated assault and robbery. When the judge entered, we arose just like in the movies.

 The last 20  to file in were the first 20 called to go up into the jury box, including me.  There, we were asked many questions, to which we were to raise our hand if our answer was yes.

Then we filed into the jury room in which there was a large table and comfortable chairs.  This was to be our home for the rest of the morning.  We were then called one by one into the judge's chambers to be interviewed.  It took a long time.  From that pool of 20, three were dismissed, leaving 17 of us.  Then 7 more from the group still waiting in the courtroom went through the same process, then joined us in the jury room.  They called the first three of them into judge's chambers one by one.  They were acceptable, so the other four were released back into the courtroom.  Then the 20 of us filed back into the courtroom and the jury box.  

They then released all of those still in the courtroom that had just been waiting all morning and were never interviewed.  

For the next few minutes, the baliff passed a paper between the two counsels.  Each had five turns to cross a name off of the jury list.  Ten names were left.  Then one of the clerks read the names of the ten jurors left on the list.  The other ten of us were dismissed.

I got home at about 2:00pm.  I was surprised that they didn't feed us lunch.  Everyone was hungry.

It was a very interesting experience.  I was exposed to people from all walks of life in those few hours.  The jury pool included the president of our local university.  I jokingly call him the most hated man in St. George because it was he that instigated the Dixie College name change.  But he seemed like an okay guy.  I only knew one of the others in the jury pool.  Actually, I knew his wife.  Years ago we served on the PTA together and sang in a community choir together.  

I think I would very much like to have that experience again sometime.  It made me appreciate our court system and the blessing it is to live in the United States of America.  

Coincidentally, the theme of our Keynote program this spring is "America."  Answering the call to jury duty gave the words we sing about our country more meaning.  "America, America, I gave my best to you."