I got a letter in the mail around the end of September, which was a Jury Duty questionnaire that I had to either mail back or complete online. It told me that I had been randomly selected to be in the pool of jurors for the month of November. The questions consisted of whether I was a resident of Salt Lake County, if I could communicate in the English language, and if I had any conflicts that would preclude service during the month of November.
Around November 1, I received notice that I was selected for Jury Duty the week of November 10-14. There was a phone number to call each evening, beginning Friday the 7th to find out if I needed to report on the following day, based on the reporting number on my card.
I called Friday evening, and the recording said that reporting numbers 1-91 were to appear on Monday morning. My number was 92. I called again Monday evening and the recording said that numbers 92-255 should report on Wednesday at 8:30 am, since Tuesday was Veterans’ Day.
When I arrived on Wednesday morning, I was directed to a large room with lots of desks. The jury coordinator (or whatever her title was) came in with a list of names and took roll. As each name was called we indicated that we were present, and also whether or not we required a letter of verification for our employer. I’m not sure what order she was reading the names, because it wasn’t alphabetical, and it wasn’t by reporting number, since I should have been first on the list in that case. After the roll call we watched a 12 minute video on what to expect as jurors.
When the video was over, she came back into the room and called a list of names for the first group. My name was in that list, and we lined up against the wall and were taken upstairs to the courtroom. They lined us up in the order our names were on the list, and we filed into the courtroom being seated in order, since the judge and attorneys had a list with our names and seating assignments. As I found out later, there were 45 of us in this initial group. I was number 7 on the list.
After we were seated, the judge introduced himself and the attorneys, and told us the name of the defendant and what he was accused of. He said the trial was anticipated to last 3 days.
The first juror was handed a piece of paper with questions on it that we were all required to answer. When he was done, he handed the paper to the next juror, until we had all responded while the attorneys made notes. The questions were:
[ul]
[li]State your full name[/li][li]What is your occupation and who do you work for?[/li][li]What is your highest level of education?[/li][li]What is your spouse’s name and employment?[/li][li]What are your hobbies and interests?[/li][li]What magazines and periodicals do you subscribe to?[/li][/ul]
After that, one of the prosecutors read a list of potential witnesses, and the judge asked if anyone was a relative or close personal friend of any of the principals or witnesses in the case. He asked if anyone would have a major hardship serving on the jury, and if anyone had other reasons that they felt they would be unable to render a fair and impartial verdict. Two jurors were immediately excused, one who was a police officer, and one who said she had already made up her mind about the case and couldn’t be impartial.
Next, we all went out into the hall and each juror was called in one at a time for additional questioning. After the interview, some of the potential jurors left, and the rest of us stayed. When it was my turn, they asked about my wife’s employment. I had told them she worked with the local school district in the adult education program at the state prison. They wondered if that would affect my judgment. They also asked if I had heard anything in the media about the case.
It so happened that there had been a story on the news the day before. Apparently a jury had been selected for the case on Monday, and had all been excused, so we were being selected to replace that jury. (I heard 2 different stories about why they were excused. The news report said something about jurors being offended by graphic crime scene photos, but I also heard from others later on that the jury had been discussing the case among themselves, which is verboten until deliberations). Anyway, I told them I had heard that news report, but didn’t know anything else about the case, which was true.
As a side note, one of the other jurors who was selected told them he knew a lot about the case. He had been working just a couple of blocks away when it happened, and he heard about it on the radio and drove by the scene that afternoon. He had followed the case in the news, and he was still selected. Go figure.
After the individual questioning, they filed us back in to our original seats. About half of them were now empty. Each side has a certain number of peremptory challenges they can make to have specific jurors eliminated. So each side would take the list of remaining jurors, look us over and scratch off a name. Then they would hand the list to the bailiff who would give it to the other side, and so on, back and forth. While this was going on, the judge kept us entertained by reciting the history of the jury system, dating back to the Greeks. After he finished reading, the attorneys were still crossing names off the list, so we waited another 10 minutes or so while they finished.
After they were finished the bailiff handed the list to the judge and asked, “Does either side have any objection to the manner in which the peremptory challenges were issued?” The prosecutors did, so we went back into the hall while the judge and lawyers fought it out. We never did find out what the objection was. We then went back into the courtroom, to our original seats, and the judge read off the names of the first 10 people who had not been crossed off of the list. I was now number 3. We were sworn in by the clerk as jurors, and everyone else was dismissed.
Since by this time it was 12:30, a lunch recess was called until 1:15. The newly minted jurors were escorted to the jury room where we could leave our things, and we were told that we could go to lunch either in the cafeteria or somewhere else close by. When we got back, we were escorted into the courtroom and the trial began.