Jury Duty

I reported for Jury Duty on Monday morning at 07:30 as we were told to do. This is a Federal District Court that I was called to serve on and this was an experience that I felt strongly was my civic duty to participate in. At the same time I was more than a little bit pissed that I had to get up at 05:30 and drive through a deluge of rain to get to the court house yet at 10:30 we still hadn't been sworn in because none of the judges had made it in yet. Finally Judge Heaten made it in and all of us were qualified/sworn in and allowed to recess to the jurors waiting room. Which is what we did all day long! WAIT!

Now I will give it up and say that it was one of the worse rain storms in a while in OKC and there were parts of NW OKC that got greater than 7 inches of rain that brought us into the national spotlight but why was it if better than a 100 jurors that traveled from all over the Western District could make it to court why couldn't the judges that lived right in OKC? An 86 year old juror was there for his 4th term on a Federal jury that put it fairly succinctly! It was a case of the tail chasing the dog! We were expected to interrupt our lives and were being held accountable for being there, but the judges didn't seem to held to the same accountability! I was there from 07:30 until after 5:30 pm and was never seated on a jury.

I felt that it was a wasted day that I could have been doing something more productive than sitting in a jurors waiting room waiting. I don't mind doing my part but I want to be doing something! I could have been stormchasing!