The Joys of Jury Duty

For the past ten days, I’ve been at Aspen Ridge Boy Scout Camp in Preston, Idaho with my son’s Boy Scout Troop. We then took a whirlwind tour of Yellowstone, returning to Colorado Springs on Monday. Just prior to leaving for that trip, I received a Jury Summons with orders to report to the court house the day after returning. You can imagine my excitement. Ten days of missed work, followed by an unknown amount of missed days due to Jury Duty.

On Tuesday, I reported to the court house, surprised to find a nicely equipped holding room with wireless Internet access, plenty of outlets, and a room packed with about 300 or so other jurors.

I had about 400 emails to check up on from my trip, so while waiting for jurors to get assigned to various cases, I hopped online and began flagging emails for follow-up. Imagine my surprise when someone sat right next to me sporting an Acer C302 Tablet PC. Not one to let an opportunity like that slip by, I began asking him about his tablet pc, how he uses it, etc.

It turns out the guy is a law student interning at the court house, and has been using a tablet pc for several years. And yes, he actually uses it to take handwritten notes during class. He seemed quite pleased with his choice, pointing out that he had everything he needed: built-in cd rom, large screen, and handwriting.

My name then got called, so I said my good-bye to my new tablet pc buddy. Along with 29 other jurors, I reported to my assigned court room. I then heard the dreaded words jurors hate to hear: “This case will last 6 -7 days”. That said,  I was determined to put aside the inconvenience this was going to cause and do my duty. I sat through about 5 hours of juror questioning, and was then released. 

All in all, it was a good day. I learned a great deal about our system of law, followed-up on a lot of emails, and got to converse with another tablet pc user. The next time you get a jury summons, don’t be so quick to frown upon it. You never know what is in store for you.