There is a court case, and I'm going to publish this after the estimated end, where a home heath aid is accused of stealing money from an old person. I don't know the details except, this experience here, was a reason I could not serve on the jury.
I've served on a federal grand jury for 18 months. That was informative. And there was no way I could have gotten out of that. And I served on a petite jury for a case involving a Latino guy whacking a bunch of other Latino guys with a machete. That was worse. It was in Spanish and English, and I would not wish that kind of experience on anyone. It was hella boring. I got removed from the jury pool once because I knew too much about a factor in the trial.
So with that experience I was hoping there was something that would help me out of this jury pool. The judge asked 12 questions and we were to write down the number if the answer to the question was yes. Did I know the lawyers or the defendant or the judge? No. Did I have a family member who was in jail? Yes. There are a lot of people on my dad's side with problems. Then the judge mentioned the substance of the case and asked if any member of my family experienced something similar.
Later, because there were 40 people in the pool, and those of us with higher numbers were allowed to go out for 45 minutes, I was called up to the bench. The judge asked me about the questions I answered yes to. The first one was no biggie and he dismissed that. The second one... I mentioned what happened with Carol and Sonya. I mentioned this blog. I mentioned the stress trying to deal with it had on our marriage. When he restated what I said he made Sonya the focus, and I countered him, and pointed out my mother in law was the victim and this led to her early death. So to the question did I think I could be impartial, the answer was no. And thus, I got out of jury duty.
