Jury duty is a wonderful thing

I was on a jury in a civil trial in Jefferson in November. I enjoyed the process and took it very seriously. I ended up being the jury foreman. I was the very last juror interviewed during selection and pretty much knew I would be picked because most people were just trying to get out of it. We ended up with a jury with a lawyer (succession planning), a dentist, two retired military officers, two computer engineers, and me who is an IT Director. It was a bad break for the plantiff team, I think, ending up with a group of fairly smart people because most of his case was BS and smoke and mirrors. I felt bad for the lady who got hurt, because she was genuinally hurt, but they offered no evidence that the accident was not her fault.

Anyway, it was a lot like trials I have seen on TV and movies in a lot of ways and they tried to take care of us as much as possible. The bailiff said we got along very well and was one of the best behaved juries. We all left with a sense that we made the correct decision and all commented that we enjoyed the experience. I certainly had a greater appreciation of our legal process after.

I would have loved to pick the brain of the defense attorney after the trial because I was so interested and wanted to get his point of view about the decision we made. I see him in my building from time to time (I had no idea who he was before the trail), but didn't know if he would think it was innappropriate to talk about.