Jury Duty:
6:00am: gruelingly wake up. I finally met gennie online, this girl who's blog i've visited a few times on the net. but that was like 3:00am, and that means i only had three hours of sleep.
6:20am: ate, changed, ready to go. Take note: men only need twenty minutes to do their stuff in the morning. Women take need a *little* more time then that.
7:00am: left with sister for downtown san diego.
7:30am: entered Jury Lounge, picked up my questionnaire and my little plastic holder for my juror badge.
8:00am: juror orientation. Now this was boring as shit. We had to listen to the superior court judge give some long ass pep talk to us, saying this is our civic responsibility and other lame stuff, like the most important thing we brought was our common sense for these trials. blah blah blah someone make this guy SHUT THE HELL UP. In addition to that, the microphone had audio problems, which kept sending loud ass feedback signals.
8:10am: Jen Rivor was also there. Later on, the orientation guy said if you can't report in for two weeks, please report to Juror Services for rescheduling.
Upon that, it was a mass exodus of 100 people yelling "whoohoo i'm outta here!" and running out the door.
The juror orientation leader said: "um...... well for those of you who stayed, thank you"
9:00am: Boredom. Got some strawberry pop tarts and red mountain dew.
9:30am: i've been reading New York Times and watching Entertainment Tonight on the TV. You know what? The New York Times is a REALLY GOOD newspaper. It's informative, doesn't waste time on stupid pictures, and is full of useful facts. Man, that Bin Laden tape is chilling. But i'm suspicious of why he left a tape like that lying around. I mean this guy is a freakin 150 IQ Genius.
Anyway the first group of 24 jurors were called over the intercom. They did it alphabetically, so too bad for Mr. Yen or Miss Zzymock or whoever is at the end of the alphabet. I didn't think they would get to L, but surprisingly they did.
9:40am: To get to Department 8, you have to go up three floors, walk across the bridge, and go down one floor. After crossing the bridge, I saw the elevator and said "hell why not". I stepped in, then all of a sudden the whole GROUP follows me in! We fit about 20 of us in that freakin elevator, and it was all creaking and everything. After getting off the elevator, our giant group waited outside Department 8, and the baliff came out and gave us the rules and everything. he said to wait till 10am and we would enter.
9:50am: i got tired of sitting, so i found a trash can, turned it upside down, and sat on it.
10:00am: the baliff came out. Said there was a delay. Go back to the jury lounge.
10:05am: we were told the delay is gone. We can come back to the department. Back up the escalators we go...... This time we're not taking the elevator down one freakin floor.
10:10am: we got inside the courtroom. The judge gave yet another boring speech. Judge Kronberger is a cool guy, but i just get bored easily. We met the two attorneys, and we met the sad middle aged man who was arrested for DUI. We took the oath, then after that the clerk called the 24 juror-to-be's. There were a total of 36 of us because there were some left over from yesterday to add onto our original 24. The clerk read off the names....
... no not me yet.....
... not yet.....
... this waiting is killing me! they've called 10 names already!...
clerk: "Aldrin......"
hell, if it wasn't even correct, i made it to the finals! Juror #14, baby!
12:00pm: we were going through our questionnaires. We're given prompts and instead of writing our answers down, we answer them verbally so the judges and attorneys and even the other jurors can all hear. We got through the first 5 of us, then it was lunch time. I walked to the Baja Grill and got me some fish tacos. There were no damn seats, so I went outside and ate on a bench outside of Morgan Stanely Dean Witter and the giant Pacific Bell skyscraper.
12:15pm: decided it was time to explore downtown San Diego. I passed by the construction sites for the Ballpark and also Park Place. Explored all over these buildings. Saw some scary homeless people.
1:30pm: came back to the courtroom. I can't tell you what else we talked about because that's illegal. muahahhahahahaaha.
3:00pm: it was time for the final cuts! Would I make it into the jury box?
The system: One by one, the prosecuting and the defending attorneys take turns in dismissing people of whom they do NOT want to serve on the jury. By then they would end up with 12 people. However, the first dibs go to the Judge himself. He dismisses people based on his judgement on whether they would be right for this DUI trial. He took out a whopping 6 people. So I thought I had a good chance.
1st cut. 2nd cut. 3rd cut.
There were a bunch of gaps, so the clerk had us all re-arrange and sit in new seats. I was now Juror #6.
"The defense would like to dismiss Juror #6".
damn damn damn.
My day was now done. I went down to Jury services, and I turned in my badge. I will be free from jury duty for at least another year.
I called my sister up and she said she'd get out of work @ 5pm. So I spent the rest of the day at Horton Plaza.
6:00am: gruelingly wake up. I finally met gennie online, this girl who's blog i've visited a few times on the net. but that was like 3:00am, and that means i only had three hours of sleep.
6:20am: ate, changed, ready to go. Take note: men only need twenty minutes to do their stuff in the morning. Women take need a *little* more time then that.
7:00am: left with sister for downtown san diego.
7:30am: entered Jury Lounge, picked up my questionnaire and my little plastic holder for my juror badge.
8:00am: juror orientation. Now this was boring as shit. We had to listen to the superior court judge give some long ass pep talk to us, saying this is our civic responsibility and other lame stuff, like the most important thing we brought was our common sense for these trials. blah blah blah someone make this guy SHUT THE HELL UP. In addition to that, the microphone had audio problems, which kept sending loud ass feedback signals.
8:10am: Jen Rivor was also there. Later on, the orientation guy said if you can't report in for two weeks, please report to Juror Services for rescheduling.
Upon that, it was a mass exodus of 100 people yelling "whoohoo i'm outta here!" and running out the door.
The juror orientation leader said: "um...... well for those of you who stayed, thank you"
9:00am: Boredom. Got some strawberry pop tarts and red mountain dew.
9:30am: i've been reading New York Times and watching Entertainment Tonight on the TV. You know what? The New York Times is a REALLY GOOD newspaper. It's informative, doesn't waste time on stupid pictures, and is full of useful facts. Man, that Bin Laden tape is chilling. But i'm suspicious of why he left a tape like that lying around. I mean this guy is a freakin 150 IQ Genius.
Anyway the first group of 24 jurors were called over the intercom. They did it alphabetically, so too bad for Mr. Yen or Miss Zzymock or whoever is at the end of the alphabet. I didn't think they would get to L, but surprisingly they did.
9:40am: To get to Department 8, you have to go up three floors, walk across the bridge, and go down one floor. After crossing the bridge, I saw the elevator and said "hell why not". I stepped in, then all of a sudden the whole GROUP follows me in! We fit about 20 of us in that freakin elevator, and it was all creaking and everything. After getting off the elevator, our giant group waited outside Department 8, and the baliff came out and gave us the rules and everything. he said to wait till 10am and we would enter.
9:50am: i got tired of sitting, so i found a trash can, turned it upside down, and sat on it.
10:00am: the baliff came out. Said there was a delay. Go back to the jury lounge.
10:05am: we were told the delay is gone. We can come back to the department. Back up the escalators we go...... This time we're not taking the elevator down one freakin floor.
10:10am: we got inside the courtroom. The judge gave yet another boring speech. Judge Kronberger is a cool guy, but i just get bored easily. We met the two attorneys, and we met the sad middle aged man who was arrested for DUI. We took the oath, then after that the clerk called the 24 juror-to-be's. There were a total of 36 of us because there were some left over from yesterday to add onto our original 24. The clerk read off the names....
... no not me yet.....
... not yet.....
... this waiting is killing me! they've called 10 names already!...
clerk: "Aldrin......"
hell, if it wasn't even correct, i made it to the finals! Juror #14, baby!
12:00pm: we were going through our questionnaires. We're given prompts and instead of writing our answers down, we answer them verbally so the judges and attorneys and even the other jurors can all hear. We got through the first 5 of us, then it was lunch time. I walked to the Baja Grill and got me some fish tacos. There were no damn seats, so I went outside and ate on a bench outside of Morgan Stanely Dean Witter and the giant Pacific Bell skyscraper.
12:15pm: decided it was time to explore downtown San Diego. I passed by the construction sites for the Ballpark and also Park Place. Explored all over these buildings. Saw some scary homeless people.
1:30pm: came back to the courtroom. I can't tell you what else we talked about because that's illegal. muahahhahahahaaha.
3:00pm: it was time for the final cuts! Would I make it into the jury box?
The system: One by one, the prosecuting and the defending attorneys take turns in dismissing people of whom they do NOT want to serve on the jury. By then they would end up with 12 people. However, the first dibs go to the Judge himself. He dismisses people based on his judgement on whether they would be right for this DUI trial. He took out a whopping 6 people. So I thought I had a good chance.
1st cut. 2nd cut. 3rd cut.
There were a bunch of gaps, so the clerk had us all re-arrange and sit in new seats. I was now Juror #6.
"The defense would like to dismiss Juror #6".
damn damn damn.
My day was now done. I went down to Jury services, and I turned in my badge. I will be free from jury duty for at least another year.
I called my sister up and she said she'd get out of work @ 5pm. So I spent the rest of the day at Horton Plaza.
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