3 Lessons from Jury Duty
So, in case you haven’t seen it yet on Facebook or Twitter, I have the dubious honor of immersing myself in a jury pool this week. I grew up in Germany and attended German schools, so I’ve had little to nil exposure to the ins and outs of the American judicial system. Thus, I learned things today! Let me show you them! 3 Lessons from Jury Duty…
1. The court selects its jury pool from DMV records — not from voter registration or homeowner records, as I thought it did.
2. In a room full of 200 strangers, it’s rather inappropriate to voice your opinion that “all Middle-Easterners are inbred, and we should just let them all kill each other.” (The voicer of said opinion was a 60-something white man who, I gathered from his conversation, hasn’t spent a whole lot of time observing any Easterners, Middle or otherwise.)
3. If you don’t speak English, they still won’t send you home. (Instead, you get to sit there with the rest of us until someone figures out whether or not you’re really a U.S. citizen.)