Within three months of getting my California drivers license, I received the letter that makes us all cringe – a summons to report for jury duty. I managed to kick the can down the road for a year and now the chickens have come home to roost.
I don’t even remember why I postponed it the first time. I assume I had a good enough excuse. This week is one of the worst possible times because we are about to launch Cola, the app we’ve been building for the past year.
I’m hoping to just get passed up and sent on my merry way as the odds of getting picked are usually pretty low.
The last time I reported for jury duty was in Chicago, and I got picked. I honestly didn’t think I would. Insiders tell me if you’re going to get picked hope for a criminal trial. They’re likely to last one day, and can be interesting. Otherwise, you could get stuck in a trial for something like a malpractice suit or insurance fraud. Those are the worst because they’re boring and can last a lot longer.
My case was about a guy who was accused of shooting his ex-girlfriend’s new boyfriend. The boyfriend and the accused had been friends at one time when they were both working together as “pickers”, guys who salvage scrap and sell it.
I may have written about this in the past, but long story short, we all though he was guilty and figured he did it. In the end, we found him not guilty. The prosecution did such a bad job, there was all kinds of reasonable doubt. Granted, it’s a single data point, but I can see how many seemingly open and shut cases don’t go the way most of us would expect.
