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A colossal waste of time

jurydutyWas called to jury duty today , and as anticipated, I was called for the first jury pool. And it was a doozy.

It was a murder sentencing hearing. The guy's already been convicted, so I couldn't use my tried and true method of getting out of serving, which is the "innocent until proven guilty" approach. You see, I don't hold to that theory, since if that were the case, the person would not have been arrested, or even put on trial. There is obviously a presumption of guilt, or no one would ever face trial.

Normally this part of the trial is handled by the convicting jury, but in this case, the original death sentence was overturned, so unable to come up with a way to nip this in the bud, I had no choice, but to succumb to completing a 30 page, 270+ questionnaire.

I'm still feeling pretty good though, since I don't believe in the death penalty. All I needed to do is fill out the questionnaire, turn it into the court, and after a review I would be dismissed. The problem is that isn't exactly the procedure.

The procedure is fill out the form, turn it in, wait while court personnel review the questionnaire for completeness, and then give you a date to return to be questioned for jury selection.

You'd think the person reviewing the questionnaire would be required to search for some key answers like, "I can't be impartial", "I am against the death penalty", etc. to avoid unnecessarily wasting anymore of my time or the court's time. Of course that wasn't the case, and I have to return in two weeks to be questioned further.

Oh well, such is life, and such is our judicial system, something I will spare you all further comment on.

And so goes another lousy day in an otherwise lousy year.
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Comments

Alan said…
Do you at least get paid $13/day?
1:48 PM
Marc said…
$15 a day! The cost of living is higher here in CA.
1:57 PM
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