My friends keep griping about getting jury summonses.
“I don’t have time,” they say. “Why don’t they just quit calling on me?” they ask. “Aww, what a nuisance,” some have actually said.
If only I’d get picked for a jury. My life would be a little more complete.
Alas, it’ll never happen.
I’ve long ached for the chance to serve on a trial jury. I get maybe two or three such summonses a year from Randall County. They usually come from the District Clerk’s Office, which means they could be looking for jurors to sit on a felony criminal trial.
Oh, I wish I could get the call.
It’s not that I consider myself a model citizen, or a paragon of civic pride. It’s just that I’ve long considered jury duty to be one of citizenship’s primary responsibilities. Someone gets into trouble, has to stand trial and he or she deserves to be tried by an impartial jury of citizens.
But almost every time I’ve ever received a summons, I’ve called the evening before and the automated system tells me all potential jurors have been excused.
Damn!
I did get a jury summons one time, not long after moving to Amarillo. It came from the 47th District Court. I reported that morning, went to the jury waiting room and then, well, waited for about three hours. Then the judge, David Gleason, came out and told us we were excused.
I was crushed.
That was when I was working full time for the local newspaper. A colleague of mine told me I’d likely never be chosen because the nature of my job — as editor of the opinion section of the paper — meant I knew too much about too many things to be considered “qualified” to serve on a trial jury. Well, that was his view. Not mine.
Then came the deal-breaker. I got a chance to serve on a grand jury. This is the panel that decides whether someone committed a crime that deserves to be prosecuted. We met several weeks and indicted dozens of individuals; we also no-billed many others, meaning that the complaint brought to us by the district attorney didn’t merit a trial.
However, before we started our work, Randall County Criminal District Attorney James Farren told us something that has stuck to me like Gorilla Glue. If any of us ever thought about getting picked for a trial jury, he said, we can kiss that notion good bye. It isn’t going to happen. Why? Farren said our service on the grand jury would label us as biased toward the prosecution.
Huh? But, I can be impartial. Honest, man.
Too bad. The DA said we were tainted by our grand jury service.
I’d trade places in a minute with those who gripe about getting a jury summons.
If only …