Jury Duty

I was stuck in court for almost the whole day because of jury duty. Jury duty is something no one should complain about. But, in my case, I do have a lot of grievances.

Last year, when I received a letter from the Sheriff Department (it is just like the Judiciary in HK responsible for jury matters) that I was on the jury roll, I immediately wrote back to ask for exemption but to no avail. In May this year, I received a letter asking me to attend court to serve as a juror, I immediately wrote back with a work transcript asking to be excused again. Once again, my request was declined. I arrived there this morning. About a hundred of us congregated in a room. A sheriff officer explained the basics and a DVD started to play the empanelling process. After that, it was not yet 10 am. We waited in the room killing time watching TV, reading books. I brought my tablet along to read some CFA cases I downloaded. I was just waiting for the first opportunity to see the trial judge and spell out my reasons to be excluded. I was pretty sure if the judge did not excuse me, the defence certainly would object to my sitting to decide the plight of the defendant. I waited and waited, wondering why it took so long for the empanelling process. It was 1 pm we were told to have lunch and return afterwards. At 3 pm, I was finally in the court room. I have not been to the court for 10 years. Everything looked so familiar and affable. The defence counsel was gawking at us from time to time. I knew what he wanted. He was to get a peripheral impression as who to exclude. I had eye contacts with him many times. I almost blinked at him to say, man, I would certain send the defendant to hell. It was a rape case.

Finally, it came the moment the judge asked if anyone wished to be excused. I was the first to raise my hand. I walked up to the witness stand with very proper court etiquette, I bowed before I said this, "Your Honour, I had been a xxx for 10 years in another jurisdiction and then another 10 spent as xxx. In all fairness to the defence, I should make him aware that I would normally see things from the prosecution's perspective. I have been a blogger writing legal comments attracting 800 readers a day." He smiled at me and said, "You are excused." The defence counsel said thank you to me too.

While I always feel I am as impartial as can be, but subconsciously, I cannot rule out the indoctrinated propensity to wear the shoes of a prosecutor.When the time has come to decide on credibility, I believe my threshold can be very high and am disinclined to cast a doubt on the prosecution case. If my attitude about the defendant is always that I am not easily fooled by his story, I don't think I can sit as a juror. In court, I just repeated what I told the Sheriff Department the reason for my exemption. They just turned a blind eye to the obvious and wasting the public money and my time.