Jury Duty

I haven't posted for quite a while.  No apologies.  A lot has been going on.

You can catch some of my thoughts on the Prior's Blog at the Mount Calvary website:
http://mount-calvary.org/category/blog/

After living in Santa Barbara a little more than a year and a half I was called up for jury duty.  I have been called before, several times, in Orange County, when I was in Anaheim, and in New York City, when I lived there.  But never picked.  Somehow I always escaped.  It may have had something to do with having been a police chaplain for the Anaheim Police Department, since they usually asked whether prospective jurors had any significant relationship with the police.

At any rate, that question didn't come up.  There was no particularly good reason I should ask to be excused except that I had other not at all unusual things to do, which is not, I take it, actually a good reason to ask to be excused.  So on Wednesday, April 8, 100 or so who were called showed up and were winnowed down to 40 or 50 after the judge, who was surprisingly lenient, let all but one of the people go who asked.  There I still was.   And to my surprise I was called to the jury box.  And then the voir dire began.  And again, nothing knocked me out.

I guess I was a little happy to have been called and chosen.  The little boy who was always last to be chosen for the baseball team (bad eyes and uncoordinated; and was only chosen because everybody had to be) was finally on the team.  Oh joy.  I guess.

So for more than a week, 5 1/2 days of testimony, there we are.  I can't talk about the case except to say that I am on a jury, so I won't.  Both sides have now rested their case, we have been instructed by the judge, and the closing statements of the attorneys begin Monday.  Who knows how long they will take.  And then the jury will deliberate.

Maybe we'll be done by Monday late afternoon.  Maybe not. Stay tuned.