Doing my civic duty ... sitting around all day

So, I've been on jury duty all week, yay! At least I got to find out what jury duty was really all about: it actually had very little to do with sitting on a jury. At the beginning of the week, they told us that there were over 470 cases on the docket for the week, but very few of them would actually make it to trial because it suddenly becomes very real for the people involved once they see the jury. This was totally true of this week as well. Only 3 trials out of 470 cases took place this week, and once the accused person stood outside the courtroom with 30 jury members of the pool waiting to go in and immediately wanted to plead out; I guess he didn't like how serious the potential jurors looked. At one point the DA came in and thanked us for being there because he was able to plead out all of his cases for the week due to having us all there and ready to go, and this was on Tuesday.

Anyway, I was selected to sit on one panel and answer questions, but not surprisingly I was dismissed from the trial. So, my days actually consisted of long lunch breaks with walks in Big Spring Park, dining at nice downtown cafes, and sitting around reading and talking to people. Since the weather was nice, it actually turned out to be a pretty good experience since we got to spend a good amount of time outside if we wanted to. I kind of wish that I had made it onto a trial, but at the same time I am glad that I didn't have to decide the fate of someone.