Jury Duty

About a month ago I received a letter informing me that I was chosen for jury duty. For those of you who are not familiar with the process, I will share my experience.

The first thing that happens is a bunch of people (probably 300) from Linn County receive questionnaires and letters informing them that they are in the jury pool. The weekend before the jury is asked to report, they are to call the courthouse and find out if they actually have to come in and answer questions. In the past, I have called the phone number and found out that my juror number didn't need to report for questioning. This time was different. My number was one of the sixty or seventy people that needed to report on Monday morning.

On Monday morning, I needed to report at the courthouse by 8:30. At that time all potential jurors watched a very boring, I mean informational video about the responsibilities of a jury. We were told that we would have our names called by the courtroom attendant and at some point during the morning. Trina told me that there would be a lot of sitting, and she was right. It wasn't until 11:30 that the first group of jurors were asked back into the courtroom. I was in that group. As for the rest of the potential jurors, they sat in the lobby for about eight hours without talking to anyone about the case before they were told they could go home. What a waste of a day.

When I was called as a potential juror for this case, I couldn't help but start to think about ways to get myself out of jury duty. I would bet that the other 35 potential jurors were thinking the same thing. Over the next 4-5 hours, the 36 people were split into groups. The first 24 were asked questions as a group and the last 12 were waiting to fill in for jurors that were taken off the case. At the end of the first day of jury selection, there were only about six people that had been dismissed. I was hopeful that I would be one of the remaining 22 people that could could go home.

Day two started with more questioning of potential jurors. I was certain that I was going home. I answered questions in a way that wasn't always the answer the attorneys were looking for. Little did I know that by voicing my difference of opinions, I was setting myself up for a week I won't soon forget. As the morning progressed, the attorneys started crossing people's names off the list. Mine wasn't one of them. From then on I was known as juror number five. There were eight of us.

The case I sat on was a civil case. The plaintiff was involved in two motor vehicle accidents that eventually caused her to have a great deal of pain and a full hip replacement. The most difficult part of this process was determining how much money both of the two defendants owed the plaintiff. We saw depositions and live testimony from doctors that didn't agree on what happened. I assume this is typical, but I have never been in a courtroom before.

After full days of questioning and answering, on Friday morning we heard the closing statements. Then we were sent to the jury room for deliberations. I was selected as the jury foreman and held he responsibilities of keeping order and making sure that everyone had their chance to be heard. I also was responsible for signing off on the jury decision and informing the judge of the decision we made. It took us about four hours to come up with a decision. We decided that the first crash owed the plaintiff $176,000 and the second crash owed the plaintiff $268,000. The plaintiff was asking for $550,000. She received about $444,000 for number of things including loss of function, pain and suffering, marital consortium and medical bills present and future.

When we were waiting to be dismissed, one of the jurors said, "If there were eight different jurors, do you think they would have came to the same conclusion?" My initial reaction was that they would probably have the same thoughts we did. As I was driving home, I changed my mind. In my opinion, five of the eight jurors in this trial would have agreed to anything the other three proposed. Of those five, three of the jurors added nothing to the jury trial. They literally said nothing important. One guy wouldn't say anything at all.

I'm glad that I was able to voice my opinion and help the plaintiff recover from her car accidents. The majority of the people in the jury made comments that they felt sick about making the defendants pay such large amounts of money to the plaintiff. I don't feel bad about it at all. I feel that based on the law and instructions the judge provided, we did our job.

And I got paid $150.