Voire Dire

However you spell that title, it is latin for "find the crazies." In regular speak, it is jury selection. FYI for the readers, I'm going to write about service in chronological order because I think that is what I was most surprised about. It's not like TV in that you know very little about what is going on, on purpose of course.

Tuesday when the whole court thing started, I was number 37 on a panel of 65 for jury selection. Selection isn't really about "picking" jurors but eliminating them. The judge and both lawyers talked and asked questions for about 40 min each during which you got a gist of what the trial was about, drugs and police testimony. Questions centered on those two for basically can you be fair and impartial on a case dealing with those things. Some people seemed to have legitimate excuses "my son go tin trouble with drugs and I'm not sure", believable stuff.

...but then there were the crazies (or perhaps they were just plain stupid). I think some may generally have been dumb and couldn't figure out the questions, but several were just trying to get out of service. There were answers like "i think all drugs should be legalized, I'd never send someone to prison for it" to "I think all cops are crooked." Mind you these were all to yes/no questions. I was actually ticked off at the people making up ridiculous answers and attempting to debate the lawyers because they were just making it all take longer then it should. If you don't want to serve, then just say you don't trust cops and shut up.

In the end, the judge strikes everyone who gave answers that would make them biased, then the lawyers each get 10 free strikes for any undisclosed reason. I think this is normally where the "engineer" notation on my juror form would get me out of service, but with the unusually high number of crazies we ended up with two engineers and a probation officer on the jury which would normally be even more unlikely to serve. Regardless, I had a bad feeling the whole time and wasn't surprised when I got called to the box. This really ended day 1 since it was almost 5pm and we were told to come back in the morning for the start of testimony.