Day 2: Voir dire in the headlights


The second day of my interview for the elevator case. I finally got thrown off. It seems that the personal injury attorneys don't like systems people. They continually stressed the need to deal with "soft" numbers. If they only knew what we do for a living!

I got put on the list for something more agreeably concrete -- murder. You can't half-murder someone, and better yet, there are no personal injury attorneys present tempting you to do more of the same.

But even murder is not without its exciting moments. The prospective jurors had to answer 15 questions from a written questionnaire. Juror #2 picked this time to realize that he doesn't know how to read. He was called in front of the judge, and on his way to the bench he fainted. (We were all surprised, since he looks even tougher than the defendant.) The guards couldn't scrape him off the floor, so we had another recess while they figured out what to do. My bet was that he took some pill that causes a miscarriage of justice.

No juror's hours today, and only a two-hour lunch. I have the sinking feeling that the defendant will never serve time - he'll die of old age or boredom before the jury selection process is done.