Santa Clara County Superior Court Jury Duty - almost

On call this week for SCC Superior Court Jury duty. Since Monday is Labor Day, all potential jurors need to check 11-12 Tuesday. Sending Anita to SFO for 1:20pm flight back to Taiwan was to take only 40-50 minutes, due to a traffic condition on 101 near Mathilda, we were delayed by 20 minutes, her flight was ok but I didn't have enough time to go home and check jury status online (I later realized that there's a number I could've called to get the same info, but i simply wasn't thinking clearly at the time), so I stopped half way and asked Yung to check for me, luckily I was scheduled to check after 5:00 pm which I did and found out I need to report to Hall of Justice (190 W Hedding Street, San Jose) and park at Civic Center Parking Garage 8:30am Wednesday.

Got up at 7:00 and took care of everything before 7:45, got to the parking garage (8:10) and had no problem finding a space (the document says we need to park at dedicated jury parking space which I could not find and parking space is limited which is hard to believe). Enter the HOJ building after security check, reported at the counter and validated the parking ticket, went into the jury waiting room and WAIT (8:15).

A judge came into the waiting room and gave some general jury information - sacrifice, duty, understanding, possibility out of court settlement, short trial,.... We were called into court room 52 (9:25) to get ready for juror selection. Juror selection begins after everybody has sworn in (9:35). Judge Gregory Ward asked potential jurors to express concerns for serving as juror, about 20 people (out of 50) raised different concerns - physical condition, job related travel, financial hardship, illness,... Judge Ward excused 7 or 8 of the 20 people, we are officially in the selection process. 18 people were called to sit in the jury box (12 regular plus 6 backup). Judge, prosecutor, and defense attorney take turns questioning them, general questions, specific questions, and questions targeting specific individual were all used. The judge excused 2 jurors during his interview session - one due to past experience with the police, the one replacing him was also excused due to her instance on certain opinions. This session of the proceeding took over 3 hours, 4 jurors were excused by the prosecutor and 3 by the defense attorney at the conclusion of this session. As a result 7 more people from the pool were called upon, I am one of them, but lunch break was called before continuing with the proceeding.

I decided not to drive home even though there was one hour and 20 minutes before resuming court session. I bought a turkey sandwitch ($6.50) and consumed it in the car. rested a while than went back to juror waiting room (12:50), we were finally called back to the courtroom at 1:45. The judge announced that the case has been settled (no detail were given), all of us were excused.