Recently I received a summons for Jury duty, last time I received one of these I made it to the court house (in Seattle) 15 minutes past the specified arrval time and they turned me away; this time I was also a bit late (this one is in Kent) but they were not so picky so they kept me anyways.
The 1st day I sat for Voir Dire it was for a criminal case involving assault, guns and other such things; they bounced me at the very end of the day, for the most part this was just a matter of chance, they took 50 people in but they only get to keep 13 (12 and an alternate) and my number was high enough, based on the way selection was done, my pre-dispositions and life experiences were likely not the prime reasons I was not chosen. With that being said, I suspect I knew too much given the sorts of questions the lawyers were asking (in general they want to tell you the way it is vs. you having some pre-existing knowledge on topics).
The 2nd day I was chosen to participate in another Voir Dire, this was also a criminal assault case with other claims going along with it, I can not talk about it beyond that as I have been chosen to participate in this trial. Today was the 1st day of evidence, we were told to expect the trial to last until the 27th of this month, at 1st it seemed hard to believe it could take that long but they take breaks every hour and a half, they don't start until 9AM and they end at 4PM, based on those facts and how slow the trial has been going I can see how that's the case.
I am writing about this primarily because I have received mails from a number of folks that I have been slow to respond to, I figured having this blog post might help explain my absence.
Absence you say? Yes, while the hours for the trial are short I have nearly 2 hours of commute each direction based on the hours of the commute and the distance so my days are starting at 6AM while I do get access to the computer on and off through the day its just enough to keep up on activities at work and not much more.