DM's Jury Duty

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For obvious reasons, the following diary contains no names. It also contains no specific dates or places.

Day 20

When I arrived this morning, a court officer told me that the judge had decided the day before that proceedings would not begin until 11:30 today. The Sheriff's office had tried to contact all the jurors to let them know, but hadn't reached them all. I could either sit in the jury room for 2 hours, or leave and return. I chose to go look at book shops.

When I returned and the rest of the jurors had assembled, we were called into the court and the judge said that they were still discussing matters of legal argument and would be a while yet before we could begin. So we returned to the jury room and began a game of Scrabble. We had enough time to finish it, by which time it was approaching the time when our lunch usually arrived. We guessed that we wouldn't be starting before lunch, so began another game of Scrabble. When in the court, we had seen several large topographic maps of the river area where Deceased's body was found, scattered over the desks. We figured that evidence to be heard soon would involve a telecommunications expert showing us the areas on the maps from which connections could be made to the various mobile phone base stations indicated in the call records of Accused A and Accused B.

Soon after we were summoned to the court. The judge said that it looked like the argument would take some time still, and so the best thing would be to release us for the day and start on time the next day. Before we left, however, the judge said that he had considered our note concerning the cleanliness or otherwise of Deceased's car, and thought the best thing would be to recall Witness 13 and requestion him on that point. That would be arranged some time in the next few days of the trial.

And with that, we left after spending all of 2 minutes in the courtroom all day.

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