A while back I was fortunate enough to be selected to serve on a mock jury. They fed me dinner (yummy Panera sandwich pack), paid me $20 AND wanted to hear my opinion! It makes my heart go pitter pat.
I have always wanted to serve on a jury. I thank my mom for that, since she has always enjoyed the experience, and would tell us all about it once the trial was over. I’ve only been able to go to jury duty once. My jury pool was even brought in to the courtroom, but we were the third pool for the same case, so I never even had a chance to speak as they finished up with their selection after only a handful of people.
With my current job, I am the only employee, and thus it would be a financial hardship on the business to let me go, so my service is waived each year.
But this made up for it!
We actually weren’t hearing the case, only seeing potential evidence they might use in court. I signed a confidentiality agreement, so I can’t go into any details, but it was really interesting. I enjoyed it tremendously. About two-thirds of the way through I realized something wasn’t making sense. They weren’t telling us something, and my poor little brain was going crazy trying to figure out what didn’t compute.
As our time was ending, I had my Perry Mason moment!
(Okay, the fact that that was the first legal television reference that came to mind is weird. I watched WAY too much tv during the summers growing up!)
I asked how an earlier impressive-sounding data point applied to the example before us. I was told that they couldn’t give me exact numbers because the number of occurrences of this exact variable were too small. I then asked how we could know that that slide applied at all since there weren’t enough cases to base it on. Seemingly on cue, the assistant handing money out distracted me, and I never got my answer.
As I was leaving, I overheard a discussion between the two attorneys who lead the focus group. “No one ever questions that the two might not be related!” “Everyone else focuses on how rare it is, which must mean there is guilt.” “How did she come up with that?”
For once I wasn’t distracted by bright shiny things, and my not-so-obvious way of thinking might have sunk the case in the jury room! I hope I was able to help them make a stronger case and that they feel they got their $20 worth out of me.
Grown Up, Now What? 
I’ve been called up for jury duty twice but both times sat in a holding cell of sorts and the cases settled out of court. Never got the real experience. I would like it too.
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Yet another way we are a kindred spirits!
I have always been fascinated by the legal process. I think it would be a lot of fun to play a role. I guess I’ll have to suffice myself with mock juries for now. (Getting paid to give my opinions that I would give for free is an added bonus!)
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I’ve never been selected, but certainly wasted a whole day there before. Serving on a jury would be interesting. I always wanted to get on one when I worked for a company. Now it costs me money; as I work for myself, so no pay when I’m not working, plus cost of public transport and lunch downtown. No longer a “fun” item on the to-do list. Sad.
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It is really hard on the self-employed. You could probably get a financial hardship waiver if you want. So glad that I’m not alone in thinking that being on a jury would be fun, especially if your company offers jury duty pay! 🙂
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I have been selected and it was enormous fun although I did not like missing work and had turned it down a few times for that reason. I couldn’t understand why some people were bored. The same people who would probably go home and watch Judge Judy or a reality show!
On another note I have been having great trouble ticking your ‘are you human’ box in Firefox and therefore could not progress to leave a comment. I wanted to leave a few comments and had to give up before considering trying another browser, (also could not find any contact details to write to you). The thing is, if I am having this issue there may be quite a few who want to comment and give up.
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Thank you for making me laugh on a Sunday morning. I could see those bored people watching Judge Judy at home!
Also, a HUGE thank you for letting me know about the difficulties commenting. I’d heard that from others as well, but I could never duplicate the problem. Once I heard it was FireFox, I could duplicate it. I now have a different spam filter on my site. If my inbox spam folder isn’t filled in the morning, I’ll know I have a solution that works, at least for the time being.
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