Jury duty: one boring responsibility
The Kyo Protocol
Sarah Kyo
Issue date: 1/23/08 Section: Opinion
At around 11:30 a.m., we went on a lunch break, temporarily free to leave the room - or, in some cases, the hallway, due to the overflow of prospects - and get some fresh air.
One-and-a-half hours later, I returned to finished up the movie. Apparently, the courthouse employees were waiting to hear if six cases needed more pools of potential jurors, so that meant another movie: "Elf," starring Will Ferrell but not Williams.
By the end of my stint at the courthouse, I learned a few things:
• How the Munro family survived its RV trip to the Colorado Rockies;
• How the exhibits at the American Museum of Natural History come to life each night;
• That the best way to spread Christmas cheer is singing loud for all to hear.
I was on my way to find out how Napoleon Dynamite tries to help his friend Pedro become elected as student body president when one of the workers announced at about 3:30 p.m. that we were no longer needed.
And then it was over.
An audible, collective sigh of relief could be heard in the room. I was a little dazed, thinking to myself, that was it? My civic duty consisted of all this?
Jury duty seems to have negative connotations for some people. I remember overhearing comments from nearby people throughout the day, exchanging stories of their ordeals and displeasure of spending their Thursday there. I'll admit that as a college student who is starting her final semester at a Bay Area university, I was worried about the possible inconvenience.
Now that I can take a step back and have more time to ponder it, I think jury duty, including the selection process, shouldn't be thought of as a "bad" thing.
Trial by jury was so important to the Founding Fathers more than two centuries ago that it is part of the U.S. Bill of Rights and part of the American legal system to this day.
The Sixth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution requires the accused in criminal cases to be given the right to "a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury."
Sure, the process to select jurors may not be speedy, but jury duty is an important responsibility of being an American adult - even if you have to watch kiddie films along the way.
One-and-a-half hours later, I returned to finished up the movie. Apparently, the courthouse employees were waiting to hear if six cases needed more pools of potential jurors, so that meant another movie: "Elf," starring Will Ferrell but not Williams.
By the end of my stint at the courthouse, I learned a few things:
• How the Munro family survived its RV trip to the Colorado Rockies;
• How the exhibits at the American Museum of Natural History come to life each night;
• That the best way to spread Christmas cheer is singing loud for all to hear.
I was on my way to find out how Napoleon Dynamite tries to help his friend Pedro become elected as student body president when one of the workers announced at about 3:30 p.m. that we were no longer needed.
And then it was over.
An audible, collective sigh of relief could be heard in the room. I was a little dazed, thinking to myself, that was it? My civic duty consisted of all this?
Jury duty seems to have negative connotations for some people. I remember overhearing comments from nearby people throughout the day, exchanging stories of their ordeals and displeasure of spending their Thursday there. I'll admit that as a college student who is starting her final semester at a Bay Area university, I was worried about the possible inconvenience.
Now that I can take a step back and have more time to ponder it, I think jury duty, including the selection process, shouldn't be thought of as a "bad" thing.
Trial by jury was so important to the Founding Fathers more than two centuries ago that it is part of the U.S. Bill of Rights and part of the American legal system to this day.
The Sixth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution requires the accused in criminal cases to be given the right to "a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury."
Sure, the process to select jurors may not be speedy, but jury duty is an important responsibility of being an American adult - even if you have to watch kiddie films along the way.
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