Happy Monday delayed

You just cant escape from a good happy monday post.

Yesterday I did my civic duty.
Jury Duty.

They called 200 to sit on a case where a young man was having his parental rights terminated by the state as he, allegedly, beat his son to death. 48 potential jurors bothered to show. We sat and listened... there were lots of lawyers... lawyers for the state, for the mother, an appointed lawyer for the 2 yr old daughter... all this before the man in question has been put on trial for the capital murder offense.

What was amusing was the jury pool. We had one man who insisted on telling the court all the ways he could not be a 'fair and impartial juror' - at every opportunity. 'Would you feel knowing that Child Protective Services was involved in this case that you have some predisposition against CPS that would prevent you from being fair' - 'yes - because they dont know what they is doing and i dont like them'... on and on... he kept getting up and leaving - going out to the hall 'because his back hurt' - causing the entire process to stop and wait for him to return.
Then we were released for lunch... and the woman seated in front of me didnt return - so they called her to get her to return because, no, we weren't finished as she had somehow thought (where she got that i dont know). So we sat - for 20 minutes - waiting for her... She returned to her seat - at which point our friend with the bad back was found missing again (in the bathroom... complaining about something that required a conference with the judge). So we waited...

There was the woman who had to raise her hand and answer every question 'no that wouldnt bother me'... the man who insisted on telling us about his family... the woman who claimed she had an opinion about the criminal trial but didnt think it would influence her ability to judge whether the alleged assailant was a good parent (*cough*)... the man who had been investigated by CPS - and it bothered him enough to point out that that *might* make it difficult but couldn't bring himself to actually decided that that might impair his ability to render a fair verdict... the young man who didnt want to be involved in the case because he shopped at the 7-11 where the mother worked... another woman who told us about the soccer team her daughter played on with the daughter of the sister of one of the lawyers...

It took all day.