Thursday, October 09, 2008

Hey, it's just like Law and Order -- only real!

The jurors filed slowly into the courtroom, looking around as they moved up the center aisle. Fill this row, then that row, then this one...until they were all seated. The men at the lawyers' tables looked them over, sizing them up, like lions deciding which wildebeests to cut out of the herd. Then the judge addressed the filled courtroom.

"The case before us is a murder case. There are actually six separate indictments for six separate murders. The prosecutors will allege that the defendant committed these six murders at six separate times. Five of these were murders for hire; the other murder was committed in the course of a robbery."

And I'm thinking "ooh, this is just like Law and Order, only I'm not watching it on TV, I'm sitting in the courtroom! The judge is talking to me (along with about 80 or so other people). But then he got to the part where he said that since it's such a complex case, he expected it to last at least 20 trial days, spread out over the period of about 6 weeks or so. And since it would so long, anyone who would not be able to commit that much time could excuse themselves. Sadly I got up and left the courtroom. So did lots of other people. But a whole bunch stayed. Didn't any of the work, I wondered. But for whatever reasons, they got the chance to be on the jury of that very cool case. The rest of us went back to the jury room. But no more cases were coming down yesterday so we all got excused by noon.

Normally it would be three days in a row. But today is the Jewish holiday, so we didn't go in. And then Monday is Columbus Day so there's no court then. So my three days are being spread out over almost a week. Of course if I get picked on a jury, it will be longer. But there's no chance that there will be another case as interesting as yesterday's.

1 comment:

BC said...

I cant commit to that. Even though I love to try to solve cases myself, I cant take that sort of time off from work. I live from paycheck to paycheck.