That was a very long day

Tweet

What a looooooooooooooooooong day. The judge merged the 2 jury panels from yesterday and continued jury selection starting this morning. It went all the way to lunch and resumed after that. Once the jury was seated then they had us one by one answer a series of questions about us--your job, your education, your hobbies, your military service, etc. After that the state and the defense attorney took turns with peremptory challenges. That is where I started to lose my patience. The state would dismiss a juror. Then the judge, the prosecutor, and the defense lawyer would return to the back room to start screening prospective jurors. When one was selected they joined us in the box and then they had to go through their biographical info. Then it was the defense's turn to dismiss someone. Then the judge, prosecutor, and lawyer would get up, to go the back, and start screening again. Then it was the bio questions. Then it was the state's turn to dismiss someone. Lather, rinse, repeat. I thought there was a limit on how many challenges they could use but if there is that limit hasn't been reached yet. Eventually the prosecutor said that the state was satisfied with the jury. The defense lawyer issued another challenge. The best was when they selected a juror, did the bio questions, and then the defense lawyer dismissed the person they had just seated. My head almost exploded. At 3:45-ish the judge said he normally would give us a break but asked if we could handle another 20 minutes so he could get us out of there before 4:30. They went through the remaining handful of prospective jurors one by one until they dismissed the very last one. After the judge gave us our instructions we could leave. The time? 4:25. So he has to go through a new batch of potential jurors on Tuesday. He told us to report at 11am rather than 9 so he could do that. They just have to find 1 more juror that everyone is good with. I obviously wasn't able to get the 2 hours of tutoring that was scheduled done today so I have to try to figure that out. Ugh. I also have to scramble to figure out what the students will be doing for 3 days next week. I can't have them watch another movie. What. A. Hassle.