Update #3

Whewww....so glad that ordeal is finally over. It was looking rather iffy, but I finally got sent home.

Just as I was posting my resolutions yesterday, we got called into a court room. It was 2pm. The case was a case of vandalism. The first 18 people got brought up to the box and the judge and lawyers started asking questions.

I know the whole point of this is to get a feel of what kind of biases the potential jurors may or may not have, but I felt like there was a lot of dilly-dallying around. I know I've been watching too much Law and Order lately when I feel that the real-life law system seems so unorganized. Lots of hmmms, ummms, and waiting around. The judge mentioned something about graffiti as a part of vandalism, and that sparked a whoooolllle long debate about people's personal feelings and experiences with graffiti. I also think San Francisco is chock full of people who want to talk about themselves and love hearing themselves talk. This one lady just went on and on about her experiences with graffiti and the judge finally said "enough...let's move on" - and she still went on going and even said "No, but wait I just want to tell you about this one time...."!!

And the kicker was, we find out an HOUR later that this case has nothing to do with graffiti! Are you for real? We definitely could have shaved off 40 minutes of talking... what a waste of time.

Because of the waste of time and dilly-dallying they didn't finish and we had to come back today at 10am. I was worried I'd still get picked. They ended up dismissing about 12 people and luckily I wasn't in the 12 that came afterwards. Just when they finally picked a jury we all breathed a sigh of relief....but then they had to pick 2 alternates. Luckily I wasn't in the pool of alternates and now we all are free to go home. I kinda wanted to stay just to see the case, since I feel like I've heard so much about it.

There was a big to-do because Traci Des Jardins was in the pool of jurors. She is the owner of Jardiniere, a place I've always wanted to go to but can never afford. She seemed like a nice lady and it was funny to see a lot of people sucking up to her. And apparently there was another guy who was a US prosecuting attorney, who had worked for President Carter and owned a firm where he managed prosecutors. He was on the alternate pool and mentioned that he's been called to jury duty, but has never been allowed to serve. I'm sure he's uber-biased. Another guy who was a defense attorney got dismissed, and a few people who expressed reservations about police officers and hate crimes were as well. I think the jury selection was so hard because there was an emotional aspect to it. It wasn't just a black and white crime, there were allegations that sexual orientation was the basis behind this crime and that brought a lot of dialogue about our own personal feelings towards this issue.

Overall, this was a very interesting but time-consuming experience. Not only am I spoiled with the succinct-ness of Law and Order but now that I've been using DVR, I've been more spoiled. I wish there was a 30-second fast forward button for real life. Can you imagine? Then when that one lady would have been going on her diatribe about graffiti it would be like "blah blah blah and this one time there was graffiti..." - SKIP, SKIP, SKIP, SKIP - "...and that's all I have to say about that."