I did my civic duty again this week, as I came up for Jury Duty. As many of us know, Jury Duty is that experience in which one takes time off from their regular life to appear in person at the Courthouse of their City or County as summoned, in hopes of providing peer representation for plaintiffs, defendants, accused and of course lawyers lots and lots of lawyers.
The actual experience, of course, is waiting, filling out various forms, a great amount of standing in lines, then waiting some more before being seated in a courtroom for voir dire. Voir dire, of course, is the phrase which stands for annoying lawyers by being honest and therefore not fitting their model of the ideal juror. It's also my favorite part of process.
Without going into the specifics which are protected by the court rules, the case I sat on was a civil case, and like so many other civil cases, this was one where someone could reasonably find valid points and false claims on both sides. This was also a case where typical biases played a role, including Racism, Greed, A David vs Goliath scenario, and of course the emotional experiences of the jurors themselves.
Both lawyers mentioned Bias in their remarks, and asked jurors if they could put aside their biases for the case. This was a point of amusement for me, because the plaintiff's attorney made an analogy for sports, where the opinionated fan is not qualified to be an official because of their bias. I was amused because officials do employ bias in their judgment, sometimes unintentionally but also because of what my chapters taught us about relevant bias. For example, one year in football Sealy and Waller had a conflict at the end of the game which led to a fight on the field between both teams. My crew got the game the next year, and we made a point of speaking about the prior year's incident to both coaches ahead of the game. While we were not assuming there would be a fight or that the prior year's incident would lead to a repeat situation this time, we made sure to forestall that possibility by warning both coaches that any provocative behavior would be harshly punished to prevent it blowing up into a fight. This is one example of how bias can serve a useful purpose, and it applies to legal disputes as well.
It also happens that this week was declared Juror Appreciation Week by the Harris County Commissioners, which meant there were door prizes. Ballet tickets, a gift card, t shirts celebrating jury duty and a swag bag were given out in each of the juror assembly rooms; 5 winners out of 225 jurors. The gift card would have been nice, not really sad about missing out on the others.
Turned out there was another old umpire in our panel. We passed the time during breaks with some old war stories, so all in all not a bad day.
Anyone else been on a jury recently?
The actual experience, of course, is waiting, filling out various forms, a great amount of standing in lines, then waiting some more before being seated in a courtroom for voir dire. Voir dire, of course, is the phrase which stands for annoying lawyers by being honest and therefore not fitting their model of the ideal juror. It's also my favorite part of process.
Without going into the specifics which are protected by the court rules, the case I sat on was a civil case, and like so many other civil cases, this was one where someone could reasonably find valid points and false claims on both sides. This was also a case where typical biases played a role, including Racism, Greed, A David vs Goliath scenario, and of course the emotional experiences of the jurors themselves.
Both lawyers mentioned Bias in their remarks, and asked jurors if they could put aside their biases for the case. This was a point of amusement for me, because the plaintiff's attorney made an analogy for sports, where the opinionated fan is not qualified to be an official because of their bias. I was amused because officials do employ bias in their judgment, sometimes unintentionally but also because of what my chapters taught us about relevant bias. For example, one year in football Sealy and Waller had a conflict at the end of the game which led to a fight on the field between both teams. My crew got the game the next year, and we made a point of speaking about the prior year's incident to both coaches ahead of the game. While we were not assuming there would be a fight or that the prior year's incident would lead to a repeat situation this time, we made sure to forestall that possibility by warning both coaches that any provocative behavior would be harshly punished to prevent it blowing up into a fight. This is one example of how bias can serve a useful purpose, and it applies to legal disputes as well.
It also happens that this week was declared Juror Appreciation Week by the Harris County Commissioners, which meant there were door prizes. Ballet tickets, a gift card, t shirts celebrating jury duty and a swag bag were given out in each of the juror assembly rooms; 5 winners out of 225 jurors. The gift card would have been nice, not really sad about missing out on the others.
Turned out there was another old umpire in our panel. We passed the time during breaks with some old war stories, so all in all not a bad day.
Anyone else been on a jury recently?
