Jury Duty

I got jury duty tomorrow. And, I'm not even moving! Sorta an inside joke because almost everytime I have been called I was either in process of moving, about to move, or had moved.

I moved from Arkansas to Seattle in August of 1977. Either that November or the next I went back for Thanksgiving, broke out with the chicken pox while I was there, and received a jury summons in the mail. Did not serve since I was no longer a resident.

Fast forward to 1983, living in Seattle, and got called for a case so important that there were four jury pools and we were organized by color. They went through the red and were days into interviewing the yellow section before finally letting us in the blue and green groups off the hook. A coworker and I both were called and that's how I knew what was going on in the yellow group ;) Anyway, there was a lot of speculation regarding the case such as the jurors were threatened by the Chinese mafia, being sequestered, etc. The case turned out to be the Wah Mee massacre where a Chinese speakeasy in Seattle' 's international district was robbed and the the bad guys left 14 people for dead - they were wrong. One person survived and could eyewitness them.

I moved from Washington state to Alaska in 1986 and shortly thereafter I received a jury notice. In 1990 I was in the process of moving from Aniak to Kodiak and, you guessed it, jury notice. I thought for sure the magistrate would let me off because I was leaving on a couple days after the duty but no, he said they really needed me. Now that was an interesting jury duty. Basically we, for lack of a better term, declared people dead all day for the coroner. These were cases where a body was never recovered so the corner needed a court order to issue a death certificate. We also had to determine the cause of death which wasn't as easy. There was a plane crash into a lake, boat and belongs found along a river bank, four wheeler out in the tundra, and I don't recall any of the others.

I got jury cuty several times in Kodiak. So often, in fact, that I was able to get our of serving because I was called too often. It wasn't bad in Kodiak because you just had to call a recording every night for a month. I only had to go in once. Now, if you get grand jury, you have to go to the airport and get on an airplane to Anchorage if you are called in. I got a summon just as I was leaving and the time they had scheduled for me would be after I moved to Florida in 2001 so I didn't serve that one.

I've been in Florida for 9 years now and just got jury duty. I am wondering if I am about to move. LOL

I've packed my lunch with items that do not have to be refrigerated per the isntructions, packed a light throw because they say it is cold in there, and am charging my laptop because they have WiFi - woo hoo! Things have sure changed in the jury pool.