had to report for jury duty today, had a summons for the supreme court in state of new york. i showed up at the appropriate court building at 8:45 am., there was a bit of a long line to get thru security, but moved reasonably fast. once in, headed to the right floor, and waited outside my room till 9 am. at 9 o'clock sharp they opened the doors of my jury assembly room. a large room with 2 symmetrical areas. we took some forms to fill out, and sat down. there must have been enough room for probably 400-500 people, it was a big room. we were maybe 150-200 i would guess. we watched some videos about the process, then filled out forms, then the clerks told us what to expect. we waited for a while, some more than others, till our name was called. the chairs were padded, and fairly comfortable, which helped. there was also wi-fi (very weak and slow, but better than nothing).
once your name was called, you had to head to another room for the jury selection process. the attorneys for the plaintiff and defendants exposed their cases in plain words, and told us the one particular case at hand would have a significant amount of expert testimony, making it likely to last well into mid December. that seemed super long, impossible for me to miss work for so long. they asked first for anybody able to commit to that duration. out of a batch of 55 jurors, only 4 came forward. the rest of us had to go in one by one and expose our case, explain the hardship we would incur, etc. in my case it took 3 different trips and a lot of explanatin, but finally i was excused out of this one jury. i went back to the original assembly room. waited around for another couple hours till i was told i could fo home for the day.
i have to go back tomorrow for my send day. i hope i don't get picked again!
