I would like to formally recant my previous declaration, "I'd rather be at jury duty than at the DMV." At the time, I was going off just one, albeit good & short, personal experience with jury duty, against multiple "shoot-me-now-this-wait-is-ridiculous" moments at the DMV. Why recant? Because on Monday, I spent the entire day, 8am-4pm, at the court house waiting to possibly be called. At least at the DMV, you spend maybe an hour, 2 hours tops, waiting to definitely be called.

My first (and only other previous) time actually getting called to go to the court house was 4 years ago in Fairfield. I showed up at 8am, was picked in the 1st group of 12 in the jury box, and was sworn in as a juror before lunch. It was relatively quick and painless. But no, not this time (maybe cause it was in Vallejo?) I showed up at 8am, and they made us wait till almost 11am to go to the courtroom, but instead of just calling 12 people at a time, like in Fairfield, they sent everyone in, all 100+ of us. Seemed like overkill.

And they spent the entire day going through prospective jurors. They maybe went through 50 people, and only choose 11 (out of 14: 12 main, 2 alternates). So they made us come back today, to finish choosing the remaining 3. I didn't mind, cause since I work for the state, I get paid my full salary while at jury duty. This case was going to be at least a 3 week trial, and I actually wanted to be on the jury. I'd see it as a mini paid vacation. And yes, I'd rather be in jury duty than in Merced & Fresno.

The thing that made it painful was that there were 3 defendants, each with their own lawyer, so whenever a juror was questioned, there were 3 defense lawyers as well as the 1 prosecution lawyer, each asking multiple questions. And one of the defense lawyers asked the same exact question to each juror. It really old, really fast, and even got on the judge's nerves too.

But in the end, I didn't get picked . Hope it doesn't take around 4 years to get called again.