Jury Duty

I was called for Jury Duty back in August and I requested a deferment because I was about to go on vacation. Well my deferment came due today. I had to drive to a sketchy part of Atlanta at the crack of dawn (7am but seemed like the crack of dawn) and serve my county. What a LONG and drawn out process. This was the first time I've ever had to go to jury duty. They make you wait in a huge room with about 400 other people and then they call your name (after 2 hours) and send you to a court room. I was juror #67 out of #68. I went to the court room and they tell you what the trial is and then ask a bunch of "group" questions and if they apply to you then you hold up your laminated juror number. That lasted about an hour. After that they had Row 1 stay, row 2 return in 1 1/2 hrs, row 3 to return at 2.15 and row 4,5 & 6 return at 3.30. It was 11.45 AM so I had nearly 4 hours to kill. UGH! This part of Atlanta isn't the nice area with all the shops, it is the area surrounded by homeless people. I did take myself to a nice lunch and I had a great piece of homemade key lime pie.

I walked back (about 1/2 mile) to the courthouse and sat in the sunshine for about another hour. At 3.30 a large group of us waited in the hallway on hard wooden benches. And we waited and waited. They called in a few people but they only made it to #48 before they had selected their 14 jurors. This was around 6pm. We all had to file back into the courtroom and after another hour we were finally free to go. Unbelievable process and I was never in the running to be a juror. I would say an entire day wasted but it was a small lesson about how our justice system works.

In case you are wondering the trial was for a teacher that was beaten by a 17 year old female student and her mother (the mother was tried last week and got 1 year in jail).

On a happy note, I had my 3rd and final shot this morning. YEAH! I'm planning to call the RE tomorrow and see if I can get my schedule for the FET. I hope to start the process in 28 days. It is like seeing a faint light at the end of a very long tunnel.