Civic Duty

I just returned from 5 days, spread over 2 weeks, of serving on a criminal jury. It is something I don't want to have to do again. We ended up with 11 jurors in agreement and 1 who we basically browbeat for 1 1/2 days until he agreed to a guilty charge, but on a lesser count than most of the rest of us would have liked. For quite a while I was sure we were going to end up with a hung jury. Others in the room who were more familiar with the process said there was no way the judge would allow us to declare that after just two days of deliberation. Which could have meant we would go into yet another week. Perhaps that is the reason the one juror decided to relent. It didn't help that the statutes were very poorly written with the possibility of more than one interpretation, though again, the vast majority of us agreed on one interpretation. Fortunately, I won't be called to serve again for at least 3 years. While I agree in principle with the American justice system and the ability to be tried by a jury of one's peers, in practice it is not pretty.