“Jury Duty: Your civic obligation” said the postcard in the mail, informing me that I was due to appear at the Middlesex County superior court in Woburn at 8am today.
I always thought that my primary civic obligation was to wear clothes. Anyway…
As of 10:15am, there’s not too much action in the jury pool. We were greeted by a court officer who won over the surly crowd with his Red Sox references, then we watched the same 18 minute orientatory video that I remember from 3 years ago, and then we received a visit from an actual Superior Court judge who droned on a bit about how rewarding and fulfilling jury duty could be. She finished with a quote from Bill Clinton’s inaugural address:
But for fate, we—the fortunate and the unfortunate—might have been each other.
Not an ingratiating quote to just randomly bust out, but I believe that she was referring to us (the prospective jurors) as the fortunate, and the derelicts that we are about to convict as the unfortunate, but we’ll see what happens as my civic obligation progresses…
UPDATE 6:30PM
Well, not 5 minutes after I wrote that, civic obligation took me and the other 95 members of the jury pool to a courtroom for potential impanelment on a criminal case. The judge read us the list of charges against the defendant: Two counts of attempted murder, 10 counts of assault and battery, assault and battery with a dangerous weapon, two counts of witness intimidation, three counts of animal cruelty and stalking (at home, I went home and googled the news article, which is here). And then the judge warned us that the trial might take 5 days.
Attempted murder?Assault and battery? Animal cruelty? The jury pool stared at the defendant, a large bald African-American man who looked clean-cut and intelligent in his suit and glasses. As the list of potential witnesses was read, I felt woozy just thinking about all of the testimony about violence that this jury would be forced to consider. There was no way I could serve on this jury.
Luckily my number was 81, so I was pretty much guaranteed not to be called for potential impanelment. Yet I still had to sit in the courtroom all day long as numbers 1-68 were questioned. I had my excuse all ready — “To be honest, Judge, this sounds like it could be a graphic and violent trial, and I guarantee that I’ll faint at least once” — but I’m glad I didn’t have to use it. We were released at 4:18pm. Civic obligation FULFILLED.
