Jury Duty....the saga continues

So the jury duty thing is over and wow what an experience. First, there were about 200 to 250 people there in the “Jury Assembly Room”….As the first morning went on, you would hear strings of names for people selected to be on a jury. At times, there were calls for the juries that belonged in a certain judge’s courtroom. These were juries that hung over from the previous week. At 11:00 am, my name was called. The first on a list of 22 people….this indicated it was a criminal trial. We made our way via 2 secured elevators to the 19th floor of the Justice Center in downtown Cleveland, Ohio.


It was quite a gathering of people as they say “from all walks of life”. Some had served on jury duty before and some had not. The Judge was what I would consider young. He was very thorough. We spent the remainder of Monday, all day Tuesday and half of Wednesday in “Voir Dire” [from Wikipedia web pageVoir dire (English pronunciation: /ˈvwɑr ˌdiər/) is a phrase in law which comes from the Anglo-Norman language. In origin it refers to an oath to tell the truth (Latin verum dicere), i.e., to say what is true, what is objectively accurate or subjectively honest, or both.]. This is the process of jury selection where a series of questions are asked that help the lawyers determine who they do and don’t want on the jury. In this court, the judge was the main driving force in this process and it seemed that he was very thorough. Everyone had an opportunity to speak about their previous experiences with courtrooms, crime and understanding of the law.

Once the 12 were selected, the remainder of the 22 was released back to the Jury Assembly Room where they were again in the pool for being selected to another jury. This was also the place where we gathered in the morning and at lunch time before going up to the courtroom. The people watching in this room was also very interesting (enough so for it to be the subject of another blog).

After the voir dire was complete, we heard testimony and evidence on Wednesday afternoon, all day Thursday and the case closed on Thursday. We were late in the day and elected to come in on Friday to deliberate. In my mind, and with hind sight being 20/20, I think we could have deliberated on Thursday and been done. There was not much evidence to convict the defendant and we quickly agreed on Friday morning. It was however nice to deliberate at a leisurely pace without really feeling like we needed to be in other places or beating rush hour traffic.

From the first day in the courtroom, the judge told us the testimony would take about a day and a half and that the trial would be done by Friday. I think that since he had spent what seemed like such a long time on the voir dire process, we were all nervous that it would go longer than the 5 days jury duty is supposed to last. It did indeed end on Friday. To me, this is just amazing, that 200-ish people can be gathered on Monday and business or “court” would be finished by Friday and the next Monday, it would all start over again with another 200-ish room full of people.

Jury Duty

Today is my first day of jury duty for the Cuyahoga Court of Common Pleas. There are probably about 200 people here. We have watched a movie, been addressed by two bailiffs and a judge. So far it has been interesting. Will try to post as able...the most harrowing part so far, has been the trip to downtown Cleveland...new traffic patterns because of construction. it took about 40 minutes during rush hour to make a 6 mile trip...huh!