Municipal Court in downtown Austin, site of today's exercise in civic duty.

Municipal Court in downtown Austin, site of today's exercise in civic duty.

It finally happened. I was called to jury duty and had no reasonable excuses. And I didn’t get struck during voir dire, which meant I ended up being empaneled. Fortunately, it was a fairly simple traffic violation case, and we were able to go from opening arguments to rendering a verdict in about 2 hours.

My first jury duty occurred during the summer between my junior and senior years in college. It was a capital murder trial. I sat through three days of jury selection before it was my turn to answer questions. I was excused after one question (“Can you tell the court a little bit about yourself?”). The next time it occurred, I was in DC, so I was exempted. The last time it happened, I was working for the Legislature, so I was exempted. This time, I had no excuse.

For more than an hour, the pool of prospective jurors — at least two dozen of us — sat in the employees’ break room, watching Days of Our Lives. We were all secretly hoping to find out who kidnapped Sidney’s baby, but it wasn’t revealed. Apparently, the judge who was supposed to preside over the case became ill, causing a reshuffling of judges and courtrooms … and a delay. The judge was very upbeat and helpful, guiding both the prospective jurors and the defendant, who was representing himself, through the process. The state’s attorney was also nice and patient. He led almost all of the questioning.

I was never individually asked a question. The state attorney was looking to weed out jurors with recent traffic tickets and similar issues. He also wanted to cut anyone who would need visual evidence (like, a videotape) to convict. I don’t know whether the defendant struck anyone. After a recess, we were brought back into the courtroom and the first six jurors who had not been struck were empaneled, including me. The jury was comprised of three white men, two Hispanic women, and one Asian woman. She and one of the men were older than me — the rest definitely younger. All three men seemed to have professional degrees. The women seemed to be high school educated, perhaps some college.

The case involved a citation issued to a man who was in an exit-only lane on I-35 who abruptly pulled back onto the main lanes, crossing a painted barrier in the process. The state’s witness was the police officer who issued the citation, a 14-year veteran on the force. The defendant was the only other witness. The defendant did not directly dispute the case against him. Instead, he said there was debris on the ramp which fell off a trailer in front of him, and so he moved back onto the highway to avoid it. He had even put his blinker on before changing lanes. It was not quite a he-said/he-said situation, as the officer made some specific statements as to how he would have reacted had the situation described by the defendant occurred.

Once both sides presented their cases, we retired for what seemed like forever (We weren’t allowed to talk to each other.) while the judge and parties worked out the charge, our instructions. We went back into the court to hear these instructions and the closing arguments. Then we retired to deliberate. We elected the older gentleman to be foreman. He and I led the group discussion, going over the evidence and our charge. We unanimously decided the defendant was guilty, then discussed the amount of the fine. We decided on $200, the maximum allowed, because (1) we believe the officer when he said he would have examined the ramp for debris had he been told about it at the time and not written the citation and (2) the defendant could offer no corroborating testimony as he did not present the two other passengers who were in his vehicle at the time of the incident.

So the wheels of justice turned. And I came home to find Chisos asleep under the Christmas tree.

Chisos listens to my tedious story about jury duty.

Chisos listens to my tedious story about jury duty.

Meanwhile, various blogging friends of mine have done far more interesting things with their time:

My first post-jury duty CrossFit WOD was a gasser. 10, 9, 8 … 2, 1 reps of kettlebell American swings with a 20kg bell and knees-to-elbows, which are done from the pull-up bars. Finished that in a class-leading 9:42. Then we ran 400m sprints. My first was 1:29, a personal best. The next one was 1:31. But I was out of gas for the third one, gutting out a 1:44. Eating (shrimp and spinach salad), laundry, blogging, and listening to it rain followed.

Potentially related posts: