Back for round two?
This is not as vaguely sarcastic as the previous post, because to be honest I was quite interested in the whole affair. I haven't been in a district court ever before, so seeing the 'inside' is quite an eye opener and all quite structured,
- Yes there is a lot of waiting around, but only because there are legal processes occurring in the background that jurors have no need to see.
- The juror pool was not (as I had wondered) entirely made up of stay-at-home mums and the unemployed; it seemed to be a fairly good representation of NZ.
- The intro video was actually worth watching, and not horribly cheesy.
- The jury officer used an actual rotating ballot box to select the jury panel (two groups of 50 people)
I don't know what it is, but waiting to have your name called out of a random ballot and list is surprisingly blood pumping. Waiting to see who gets challenged (and trying to guess why) is like an advanced class in people-watching.
However, I didn't get picked for a jury today, so my tour of the judicial system ended at 11am.
I will leave you with two statistics though:
- the jury that was picked was: female-4, male-8
- jurors that swore on a bible were-3, and not-9
:(
The Lord God has told us what is right and what he demands:
"See that justice is done, let mercy be your first concern, and humbly obey your God."
Micah 6:8