About a week ago, the Gator called me and began telling me about how she received a letter from the courthouse telling her she is on a jury. FOR A MURDER TRIAL. She's getting excused, of course. She can't be bothered with that (channeling her mother much?) "stuff."
In her defense, she is still dealing with a lot of "stuff," (short list: my grandmother-her mother-died in May, shortly after my sister was released to rehab from a hospital in Pittsburgh, PA, after suffering a brain trauma-an ongoing thing; another family member was diagnosed with cancer and is undergoing treatments) along with the fact that she's old enough to be excused on her age alone. All that aside, IT'S A MURDER TRIAL! And she's not going. And I had to hear all the reasons, several times over. For many minutes.
I'm certainly not going to be the one to argue with her. I'm not stupid.
I have to tell you, it's a MURDER TRIAL! And she was just randomly chosen, and notified by letter, without any further process!
This past spring, I was summoned for jury selection, so I do have the teeniest bit of experience with how jury selection occurs, I asked her several times about how she was chosen, about when she was at jury selection, and mostly being answered that it's a MURDER TRIAL! I asked her how many days this trial would take. She tells me "One day. But even so blah blah"
Finally, she got the letter and read it to me. Much like the long-ago days of listening to her reading the daily newspaper to me, it was an enlightening experience:
There was no mention of a MURDER TRIAL at all. It was a summons to JURY SELECTION, not for her to serve on the jury for a MURDER TRIAL. She had to read the letter, sentence by sentence, before she understood that whether or not there is a MURDER TRIAL, she is NOT actually on a jury (yet.)
She's still getting excused, but the jury's still out on several charges: can she read for context? Does she understand how the process works? To what degree is she batshit crazy?
