Tammy’s Fabulous Blog

As most of you know I was called to Jury duty in June. I went in of course thinking I would be excused that day, then the selection process went into the second day, but even then i thought they either wouldnt get to me, or i would be excused. There was a pool of 350 potential jurors, what were the chances I would be selected as one of the 12? After-all we are talking about a Child Molestation case, and being a mother of 2 young children, I am obviously going to have a biased opinion… right?
Not according to the 2 attorneys nor the judge, they thought my work experience and the fact that I was a mother would help me make a fair and impartial judgement, and they sat me in the box! Yikes… I was up in this box with 1 other women 10 men and 4 alternates (all of which were men I might add). Tues and Wed. till noon, was jury selection, but by 1pm on Thursday, they had opening statements and 3 witnesses, so at that point I must say, I was quite impressed by the efficiency in which they were moving through this.
The court system only holds long jury trials on Tues/Wed and Thurs of each week, so after our “first” day of trial, we were set for a 4 day break. But, that wasnt all… we had to break for actually 11 days, as the judge was taking the following week off for a training class. Odd I thought for us to come back expecting to have remembered all that was said, and these were not unsubstancial witnesses. But we all did it, I guess with a trial like this, its hard to forget all the details.
We reconvened that following Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday, and lucky for me my parents were there to help out, giving my kids the attention they needed throughout, yes, i could have taken them to daycare, long 7am to 5:30pm days, but i think emotionally i probably wouldnt have been there for them, as i was mentally exhausted each and every day. So thanks Mom and Dad for helping out and being there!
The last week we heard final witnesses, closing arguments and then on thursday at about 2pm we were given the trial to deliberate. There was no possible way we were going to come to a conclusion that quickly, so we scheduled ourselves back tuesday (yesterday) at 8:30am. By 2pm, we had made our decision. It was unanimous on all counts. Guilty. The sentencing is not scheduled till august 28th.
Hard to believe I went through all that, hard to understand why someone could do something so awful to family members, and good to know that our justice system works, and happy to be a part of it, in a small way.
Unfortunately hard to get this off my mind, i witnessed sad, scary, emotional and disgusting testimony, i heard words I’d never heard before, I learned about medical terms like suggestibility and confabulation, not to mention legal terms like preponderance of evidence.
Yes i know we made the right decision, was it easy, no. But the justice system works, and we all have our civic obligation to do this, I just got stuck with a sad, sick case.