Summoned for Jury Duty

It had to happen sooner or later, I received my first summons for jury duty. Apparently I’ll be a candidate for a “Petit Jury” – which I have never heard of – as opposed to a “Grand jury” that we all know and love from t.v.

I’m actually looking forward to it, thankfully I’ve got a job that can tolerate such an interruption.  The terms are hysterical mind you. I will be compensated the kingly sum of twenty-five dollars per day and I also get free parking (a good thing too as that would have pretty much eaten away the entire per diem amount…).  I’m not allowed to read local newspapers, but I can do something with computers – apparently modem connections will be available to me. I guess I can’t get any local news on the internet.

I can expect to spend up to a week on this enterprise. I’m *really* hoping that I actually get to listen to a case rather than sit in the waiting area for the whole time just wasting away my days with the other folks who have been seconded into this task.

Don’t get me wrong, my attitude probably seems a little jaded, but I really don’t believe that the judicial system has kept pace with folks and their modern predelections. I suppose it was fine to drag some farmers in from their fields (hopefully not at some critical harvest/planting time) and expect that they would be completely unaware of any current events, and would hold no opinions about most things judicial, but that reality is long gone..

My understanding is that the average person in early 20th century America had about the same amount of information squirreled away in their brains as one could find in a current edition of a New York Times Sunday edition newspaper.  We know a lot more now than the proles of any era this world have ever known and the idea that we would not have opinions about all that information is not a realistic one.

I’ll post what the experience was like when the deed has been done.