I lost track of time and realized last night that I was late for jury summons. So at 1pm, after I woke up and the coffee kicked in, I called the courthouse. Was gonna confess my sins and pay my penalties. But long story short, even though it was a week past due, I decided to check the schedule for my group anyway - and was told to report to the courthouse TODAY at 2pm. Boy, did I blast out of my house fast. It's an hour drive, so I was late...

BUT, the garage was closed and they were redirecting us to temporary parking, and the directions they gave us were wrong, and so EVERYBODY was late.

I ended up at the end of a line that queued around the block with another couple hundred people waiting to be checked off. It went quickly. They kept us in an outside courtyard, masked and distanced. Staff did an amazing job for all the logistic nightmares they were dealing with. They only took half the folks in and ended up letting the rest go, so I'm dismissed until next year.

I served on a 3 month jury once. It was a good & difficult experience and felt important. It was a retrial (years after the original) of a guy who stalked & killed his ex-fiancee and her boyfriend, in the middle of the day, on the street. The defense argued that a childhood head trauma hadn't been introduced in the original trial; and it may have caused a dissociative state so that he didn't know what he was doing.

It took multiple days to pick a jury. I didn't want to do it but answered everything truthfully. They took me to judges quarters for additional questions because I answered Yes on the questionnaire to having had a dissociative episode. After hearing what I went through and how I felt about it, I can't believe they put me on the jury.

I think the defense hoped I was a bleeding heart. I'm not. At all. They did get one of those on the panel, but it wasn't me. She was sympathetic because she thought "well maybe he didn't know, how can we tell." It was actually good. Her attitude made us examine everything very carefully. We took days to decide against him. It was serious.

I was once kidnapped, gang raped and almost murdered. Probably a gang initiation. I escaped. But during part of it, I was dissociative. I felt like a watcher, time literally passed in slow motion, my thoughts were racing at explosive speeds, but everything was crystal clear. I wasn't allowed to tell the other jury members about that experience. We had to stick to what was presented in court.

I got sick during the trial. (In retrospect I realized it was PTSD.) They stopped the proceedings a couple times for me. A deputy once gave me a ride home and back the next day once because I couldn't drive. She wasn't allowed to discuss the trial with me.

Also, I got in trouble once for saying "nice day isn't it" to someone in the bathroom. Turned out she was a reporter. Sat by myself and didn't talk to anybody after that. It was quite the learning experience.