I got a summons for jury duty back in February, notifying me that I was going to be on call for two weeks starting on March 28th. (Dakota County has a phone-in system and people are divided into groups so they don’t have everyone drive to the courthouse every day for two weeks.) I’ll admit, I was concerned about it.
If I’d been summoned last week, I might have had to cancel my haircut on Tuesday. After six weeks, my hair is already really long, so having to schedule a later appointment… I would have looked like a giant Q-Tip. It could also have delayed physical therapy and my final exam for “Quantitative Decision-Making for Managers” on Thursday. Not good.
I checked the phone message the weekend before the 28th and it said groups 1-9 were supposed to report first thing Monday morning, 10-18 should call the number again at noon and the rest call back after 5:00pm. I don’t remember the exact group numbers, but I know that I was in Group 16, so I called again at noon, it told me to check the message at 5:00, then the 5:00 message told me to call back on Tuesday at noon. If I got picked, I had to be at the courthouse at 1:30, the same time that I was scheduled to get my haircut.
As luck would have it, the message on Tuesday said there wouldn’t be any more cases during the week, so I was safe until the weekend. I got my haircut, went to PT and took my final exam as described on the 31st.
I’m not sure why, but the phone message instructed me to call at noon on Monday and again on Tuesday. Maybe the powers that be knew that I like to sleep in past 8:15 in the morning. Regardless, the noon message today said I was supposed to head to the courthouse for the opportunity to serve on a jury.
Short version: Ate a sandwich, drove to Hastings, went to juror holding cell… room! Juror room! Watched two orientation videos, heard my name called out to walk upstairs into a courtroom along with 22 other people.
I know there were 22 other people because the court clerk called out 21 names and mine wasn’t one of them. Those other people sat down in chairs inside and in front of the jurors’ box for voir dire—questioning to help the attorneys decide who would be on the jury. The judge explained to those people that just because some of them might be excused doesn’t mean they’re not fair people. Given that I was one of two people not up there, I figured they already suspected I wouldn’t be fair. Neener, neener, neener!
First, everyone was supposed to answer six questions (they were written on a whiteboard behind the stenographer):
- Name
- City of residence
- Level of education
- Current employment
- Spouse’s occupation
- Children & age
After everyone introduced themselves, the judge asked them some questions and had people raise their hands if they had a “yes” answer. When he asked if someone would have trouble focusing on the trial for some reason, one woman said she’d had a death in the family on Thursday (if I remember right), so the judge excused her. That’s when the clerk called on Juror #22 to take her place: me.
“Shawn Bakken, Lakeville, law degree, student pursuing an MBA, no spouse, no kids.”
I couldn’t help but smile when the judge told me about how the state had the burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt in a criminal case, etc. I think it was a formality just to have that information on record—I would also like to go on record as saying I called the judge “Sir” instead of “Your Honor”. I didn’t think about it until a couple questions in and thought it would be a little strange to switch in the middle of that brief interaction.
One more person was excused because he worked with a trucking company and some of them had been broken into within the last two weeks. He was pretty sure he could be a fair and impartial juror, but was still upset about it… the judge decided to excuse him, then called up the last person on the bench: Juror #23. After going through the standard procedure with #23, it was time for the attorneys to ask the potential jurors various questions, then pick the ones they wanted on the jury.
I was in the front row of three—partway through the group, the defense attorney asked if any of us were bloggers. I raised my hand. (No way! … Way!) Given that he smiled directly at me and said he’d ask about it later, I’m pretty sure I was the only one who had a hand up.
After all the questions, he and the state prosecutor passed the list back and forth a few times before the county clerk called out the names of the people who would be on the jury. Mine was not one of those names. The reasons why… there could be a couple. (These questions and answers are to the best of my recollection.)
What do you write in your blog? “It’s usually personal stuff. There are things I don’t write in there—things that I don’t want to mention, things that aren’t appropriate to write about—but I try to make it funny. Something that people will enjoy reading.”
What do you do on a typical Saturday night? “I’m boring, I usually sit around at home in front of the computer.”
From 0-10, what level would you say you have an open mind? “Probably an 8. I’m pretty open-minded, but there are some things I have a strong opinion about. I’m a member of IOGT and one of their tenets is the non-use of drugs and alcohol, so if something like that is involved, I would take a very negative tone.”
You do realize that the state presents its case first and you should remain impartial? “Yes, sir.”
If you could have dinner with a famous person, who would it be? “One of my friends.” I went on to explain that I was on Beauty and the Geek—I’m pretty sure the defendant (who was sitting next to his attorney) perked up when he heard that—and some of my friends had gone to L.A. to pursue a career, so I’d want to have dinner with one of them. He might not have liked that answer, so I shrugged and added, “Sorry.”
Would you say you’re a leader or a follower? “I’m usually content to go with the flow, but if there’s something I consider important, I’ll take a leadership role.”
What are some of your hobbies? “I’m an Assistant Scoutmaster with the local troop and I play soccer.”
He asked a few more things about soccer, but the questions above were the juicy ones. A bunch of those could have bumped me off the jury, but my money is on the one when I mentioned IOGT. If part of the case involves drugs and alcohol, they know which way I’d be leaning.
The clerk read the 13 names the lawyers had chosen for the jury, then the rest of us were excused and instructed to call the automated phone number after 5:00 for another message. We left the courthouse late enough in the evening that I called with my cell phone when I was about half a mile from home, turned on the speaker (safer than holding it against my head while driving) and listened to the voice say that there were no more cases scheduled for this week and we had fulfilled our duty as jurors.
Am I happy or disappointed? I’m kind of indifferent. It probably would have been interesting, but the judge told us that the case is likely to take three days, so the rest of the week would have been shot. That’s one more reason why it’s best that I didn’t get tagged for jury duty last week—they’re usually done around 4:30pm every day, so I could have made it to my exam, but it would have seriously cut into my studying time.
But one final question remains… this is a personal blog entry, but did I make it funny? Ummm… knock knock?
Weren’t the templars the ones they were most worried about in Angels and Demons? Ya scared them Shawn! ..You know law … then you had to tell them you were an actor …. you say sorry cause they might not like your answer…ya topped it off with I write blogs and try to be funny. . It was funny that they kept asking you questions, my fair-minded friend!!
What exactly IS IOGT? I admit I had to Google it and found the website, but the “About” page was so full of buzzwords and almost run-on-like sentences that I couldn’t make any sense out of it. Sorry. I’m hoping you’ll be able to give a clearer (and more interesting!) answer 🙂
IOGT’s original goals were “peace, brotherhood and temperance [non-use of alcohol and drugs]”. Those goals haven’t changed much here in the U.S., but some countries include a greater focus on rehabilitation (much like Alcoholics Anonymous), some want to ban cigarettes and some are concerned about relief efforts in disadvantaged regions of the world as well. What IOGT is “about” can vary depending on which country you’re in. Does that help?
I was one of the selected jurors. We showed up the next morning as instructed by the judge. We waited on the lower level and then the clerk brought us up to the 2nd floor where the courtrooms reside. She then put us in a deliberation room and said she would be back for us. We waited about 2 hours and she finally came back. We were brought into a different courtroom and presumed the trial was going to start. The judge told us that we were being dismissed. A comment was made to a juror in the hall and they were concerned that it would affect our judgement. We were dismissed again and brought back to the deliberation room; the clerk told us that the judge was coming down to explain. The judge appeared and explained. Prior to the trial starting, as we walked down the hall to the deliberation room, the uncle of the accused mixed in with our group and made the comment “innocent until proven guilty”. The clerk overheard it and let the judge know. The reason we had to wait 2 hours to actually get into the courtroom was because they were trying to decide what to do, their eventual decision being to dismiss us. I remember seeing the uncle but I was toward the back of the line of jurors. A couple jurors mentioned that they did hear what the uncle said but did not think anything of it. The judge said that a entirely new jury would be picked and the trial would reconvene on Monday. Oh, and he also told us that we were done with our civic duty 🙂
Ah, our judicial system at its finest. (For those of you who wonder why I don’t put my law degree to better use, this is a pretty good example.)