The Voice

Issue date: 2/12/07 Section: Inside WCC

It's much better to sit in the jury box than in the defendant's seat - just ask two WCC employees who recently served jury duty.

I woke up at 7 a.m. that Monday morning and crawled into my dirtiest, most genderless clothes: a pair of stained slacks and a camouflage sweatshirt. I didn't take a shower or wash my hair that day, which I would later regret. With some homework and a novel tucked into my pack, I set out for the Washtenaw County Circuit Court on Huron St.

No, I wasn't in trouble. I had broken no laws, although I sure felt as if I were being punished. What made me crawl out of bed at that painful, early hour? I had been summoned for jury duty.

There are over 300,000 people in Washtenaw County according to the last census. I know that a lot of them have a driver's license or state ID card, which is the pool from which jurors are picked. But for some reason the gods had chosen me for this inconvenient task. It was so unfair. I grumbled my way through the metal detectors at the court entrance, rubbed the sleep put of my eyes on the way up the stairs, and scowled as I entered the waiting area where prospective jurors waited for their numbers to be called. It was a little like the way I imagined Purgatory to be.

David Gellett, an employee at WCC's copy center Ikon, was also in the assembly room the day that I was led towards my fate. "Mine was about medical malpractice," said Gellett of the civil suit for which he performed as a juror. "An anesthesiologist was accused of not keeping control of a heart catheter that caused complications and eventually led to the patient's death."

Gellett was far more cheerful about the whole experience. "I thought that it was ok, that it was my civic duty," he explained. "As long as I got an excuse for work I was fine with it. I was more worried about parking than about jury duty." This wasn't Gellett's first time being summoned for jury duty, but it was his first time being seated in a jury.

Gellett was questioned about his work, his life, and his possible biases, a common practice as lawyers probe for partialities that might affect the verdict. His brother-in-law had heart surgery, and the lawyers asked him, "what it involved, if I harbored any negative feelings about it, if I could give a fair verdict," he said. Obviously they thought that he could make an unbiased decision, as he was chosen for jury duty on the same day that I was picked.

Continued...

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