August 4, 2010
Jury Dooty 2010
Got the jury duty notice and had no conflicts so I drove up to Greeley this morning to serve my fellow citizens. Parked, walked over. Had my traveling work bag so I was all prepared to stay the day. Just wasn’t excited about any possibility of a multi-week trial. 90 some percent of the time you are out by noon. All good.
Went inside, sat in the room, and caught up on all things on my phone. Jury Commissioner came in and told us how awesome this is to serve. I haven’t really had to but I agreed its all good and not such a gloom and doom event. The guy next to me was all stressed about not being at his job and making his employer mad. Dude, its the law. Chill out.
Minutes later, a larger dude comes in and it turns out he is the judge. He closes the door and explains that we will be involved in a misdemeanor case of menacing (def: threaten, especially in a malignant or hostile manner). Hey, I do that all the time (or used to) so this ought to be good! The defendant has chosen to represent himself. That’s his right but the judge told us that isn’t always such a great idea without doing your homework. He is a “young man” according to the judge. Well, as it turns out he has a key witness that saw it all and will clear his good name. The defendant saw that witness’ name on the list of witnesses from the District Attorney so he figured he was all good. So he shows up today and they go to inventory(?) the witnesses and his person isn’t there. Turns out the DA didn’t call that person. The list of witnesses from the DA is just the proposed lit. Not who they called. You can’t call a witness not on the list so you don’t get any surprises. But you don’t have to call the ones on the list. That’s how it works. Young Menace didn’t know this. So he is there without a witness and is screwed. Crap. So the judge granted him a continuance and the trial will resume another day when his witness was actually called. Feels like he got lucky via a nice judge on a good day.
And so we were dismissed. Some other jury duty volunteer will get to deal with Young Menace later in the month I suspect. I was home shortly thereafter and back to work.
