More thrilling words were never heard

"All jurors in the pool during August 4th to August 15th are released from service. We have no upcoming trials. Thank you for your service."

Oh, no. Thank you. I was called at the beginning of the term and sat in on a three day trial. I was gripped the whole time. This was the first time I've served and the whole procedure was fascinating. The case involved a plaintiff appealing the decision of the Labor & Industries Board to not re-open her injury claim. She wanted it re-opened and the Board said the injury was healed and denied her request. She appealed. That's when I became involved as a juror.

I have to say, with all my complaints about bureaucracies and red tape, I like that such an option exists for us little people. Hopefully I never need to appeal for medical attention (knocking on all wood within arm's distance right now) but I was happy to serve on this jury.

The cool part was that, rather than recall all the witnesses who testified in front of the Board, the lawyers read the transcripts to the jury. OK, it wasn't as dynamic as watching Hang 'Em High Harmon strut around on Law & Order: The Perpetual Trial but it was not boring. Each lawyer read the answers of their witnesses and they did a good job not putting us to sleep. Even the judge stayed in tune—we jurors were checking to make sure he was turning the pages at the same time as the lawyers. I wonder if my listening almost non-stop to books on bytes affected my listening skills during the read through.

Before we began deliberating, a juror asked the bailiff what the shortest time deliberating was that he knew of. He replied "about 18 minutes." Well, if our lunches hadn't already arrived (thanks to the County for that one, btw), we would have beat the record. Based on the fact that we all had ordered iced tea as our lunch beverage, I suggested we take an informal count to see if we also agreed on the decision. Turned out that we all agreed on that too! So we tucked in, discussed why we decided the way we did as individuals, recalled the bailiff, and skedaddled after agreeing with the Board's decision to not re-open the injury claim. I'm glad my first experience did not involve an actual crime.