Jury duty is something most citizens seem to dread; yet as the first person in my family to serve on a jury, I found the experience to be interesting and a nice break from my everyday life.  Jury duty actually isn’t too bad. It’s the selection that is a pain.

The court room was way too overcrowded when I first arrived, and I had to stand in the doorway, but the questioning part flew by pretty quickly.  The judge told us to be back at 1 p.m., but we didn’t get to find out who was on the jury until 4:30 p.m.  After that I was kind of glad I got selected, because if I?had to wait three hours to find out that I didn’t get picked, I would have been upset.

Recess was something that I either looked forward to or dreaded, as sometimes the break felt necessary. For instance, I wasn’t too crazy about watching a three hour surveillance video, so the break after that was much needed.  As for the regular breaks between hours, some were anti-climatic, as it would take me a while to get back into the case fully.

The two most important things for me to remember was to keep an open mind throughout the entire case and to not let the lawyers stand in the way of my decision.  Favoring one lawyer over the other based on their style of handling the case was something I would often see myself doing; however, I knew I should consider the evidence more than the tactics the lawyers used.  After all, that’s exactly what they are suppose to doing.