Jury Duty and the Terrors Thereof

I had jury duty last week. A terrifying experience.

Now, I've had jury duty before ... have endured the long hours of boredom, the uncomfortable benches, the pencil-shaving smell of the courthouse, and the not-exactly-disappointment of being bumped out of the selection pool. But I have never had an experience quite like this one.

I got called for a criminal case and the judge began her series of questions to separate the sheep from the goats. What a lot of goats! If that jury pool was a cross-section of the citizenry of Oklahoma City, it was grim indeed. Fully a third of them had DUIs. There were a handful of possessions. But those were tame compared to what came up as the process ground on.

First there was the woman who "forgot all about" her conviction for embezzlement. Then there was the guy who told the judge about his assault charges, but failed to mention the drive-by shooting charges, and the 23-year-old who had four larceny charges before she was 18. And that was just the perps. There was a litany of victims, as well.

There was the man whose wife had been "brutally raped, resulting in the need for a full hysterectomy" 30 years ago. The girl whose grandmother was tied up and robbed just last week. The woman whose husband had been jailed for an unnamed sex offense. The girl whose mother in law robbed a bank. My god! Who are these people???

The jury was never selected because of a mistrial on a technical foul-up on the part of the clerk or bailiff. But before she released us, the judge let us ask some questions and held us in the courtroom chatting for awhile. I asked if this was typical of the process and was relieved to hear her say emphatically "No! No not at all. We've had everything but a spotted pig in this courtroom today."

I'm pretty sure we had the spotted pig, too.

It reminds me of the words of wisdom given to me by my old neighbor, King, many years ago. He told me I should keep my screen door locked if I was going to leave the door open when I was not in the front of the house. "Girl, I could be anyone!" He said. I told him, "King, you'd have to be crazy to come in here with all these dogs in the house!" At the time I had four big dogs, all lounging in the front room. King just nodded his head vigorously and told me "They out there. I could name you five I went to school with."

Clearly, King was right. They out there.