I really wanted to do something this year for Spring Break since it is the kids last one but life had other plans. I got called to jury duty the same week they had Spring Break so I had to stick around. Then Jayse got invited to go to his girlfriends parents place in Lincoln City and Jaelee got invited to go to Garden Valley to her boyfriends family cabin. Dang it!

Monday for jury duty I didn’t get called in phew. But I did get called in on Tuesday. I have been summoned for jury duty 3 times. The first time I got called in but not selected for a case about mold in a home. The second time I never had to come in. This time I got selected.

It starts by going into the court room. There were 60 potential jurors. The judge goes over the case and the charges and told us that this was a 3 day trial. This particular case had a lot of charges. Trafficking fentanyl, possession of a bomb, unlawful possession of a firearm, possession of drugs, paraphernalia, possession of drugs with intent to deliver.

They do a process called voir dire. It’s a french word. The judge and lawyers get to ask the jurors questions to help them decide who they want to select. The judge asks questions like do you know the defendant, do you know the lawyers? Do you know anything about this case? Would a 3 day trial be a hardship for you?

We were all assigned a number and had a laminated piece of paper with that number on it. If you wanted to respond to a question you held up your number. The prosecutor and defense also got some time to ask questions. They asked things like do you know someone who died of drugs? Does a case about a bomb effect you? Just a whole bunch of questions. I didn’t have strong feelings on a lot of questions so I wasn’t responding. However, sometimes they would just call on a number and ask you a question. That happened with me. The prosecutor said: We have a lot of witness testimony from police officers does the fact that they are police give them more credibility in your mind? I answered honest and said not necessarily – I think in like all things there are good and bad officers and I would base their account on my own instinct of their character. I think this got me selected by the defense.

Once the prosector and defense had their time then we all just sat there while they went back and forth between them decided on the 13 jurors they would select. Once they had selected them they let the judge know and he read out the number of the juror they had selected. My number was not called. I thought the case was interesting but didn’t want to be there for 3 days. After they called a few more numbers the defense said, excuse me judge but we wanted juror 10. He said oh yes excuse me I missed that one. That was my number!

After all the jurors are selected the trial starts right away. We were given new numbers – I was 4, sworn in, given jury instructions and then taken to a small room. We were a notebook and pencil so we could take notes. We took a break and got lunch. After lunch the trial started. The prosecutor and defense gave their opening statements and then the prosecutor started calling witnesses.

I took a bunch of notes and wrote a lot of questions I was hoping would be answered during the trial. We listened to witnesses, saw evidence and watched body cam video. Basically the defendant Anthony and his girlfriend Amber were pulled over in a vehicle that was not theirs but had permission to use it. When the officer pulled them over Anthony got out of the vehicle and threw something and got back in. When the officer confronted him he admitted to throwing drugs out. When they were searched he had fentanyl his is pocket and other drug paraphernalia. Amber had a firearm in her purse, needles and meth. When they searched the car they found another firearm, a large bong, ledgers with names and amounts, a few digital scales, larges amount of cash and a backpack with a pipe bomb and a locked bag in it that was full of drugs. It had a large amount of fentanyl in it, meth, marajuana, bath salts, baggies and digital scale.

Before each break the judge told us not to talk about the case, not to do any searches on it, don’t talk about it with people you know and don’t make up your mind until you get all the evidence. I honestly did not. I wanted to be very fair. I did not make up my mind on the defendant until probably closing arguments.

A lot of the process is boring. The prosecutors go over how each expert handles the evidence into great lengths. I know it’s so they show there is no tampering or contamination but it is very boring. Some of the time I didn’t understand why they were asking or going over things. It didn’t come together until closing arguments. I had a lot of aha moments during closing.

We spent a lot of time in our deliberation room. Basically from when we got there to when we left we were either in the deliberation room or the court room. We would be locked into the little room during breaks, we were not allowed out even to use the bathroom. There was a single bathroom in there for us to share. They brought in lunch. The jurors I was with were quiet. We barely talked during breaks. Most everyone was just on their phones. We did find out that one of the jurors had been called to jury duty 4 times and was picked 4 times to be a juror.

The trial ended up lasting 4 days instead of the initial 3.

When the closing arguments were done and we got to deliberate it was so nice to talk about it. I don’t think any of us knew for certain who’s bag with the bomb and bulk of drugs belonged to but the way the law is written on possession is that they had to be in control of it and be aware of it’s contents. So when we deliberated we all agreed that he had control of the bag and we didn’t think there was any reasonable way he didn’t know what was in the bag. We were able to all agree he was guilty on all charges.

They brought the evidence bags into our deliberation room. I never thought I would be that close to drugs in my life. We each got to hold the drug evidence, bomb and firearm. As well as all the pictures and we got flash drives with the body came footage that we did watch some parts again.

Throughout the trial I had seen the defendant cry on a few occasions and honestly he looked like a normal italian guy. When we were going back into the court room to give our verdict myself and one other juror started to feel a little bad. I’m sure these charges are going to have a large sentence so this is life changing. One of the guy jurors reminded us that the drugs he was selling harmed a lot of people.

After the verdict was read on all the counts the judge asked us to go back to our deliberation room. He came in and talked with us. I thought that was very nice. He told us this was an unusual case – a longer one with a lot of charges. He couldn’t answer specific questions but gave us general information on the whole process. He told us he would hand out a sentence in June.

After the trial it was nice to tell Greg about it and do some research. I searched the defendants name and a story came up from 2012 about him being a known gang member who had taken police on a chase. I then looked up his record and he has a lot of charges.

It was nice to see the actual court process glad I was a part of it.

So that was my spring break. The kids had a bit more fun.

Jayse left on Saturday with his girlfriend Emma to her parents place in Lincoln City. I was not in love with my kid driving that far without us but as he is almost 18 I’ve got to let go. They hung out, went shopping and went to the aquarium in Newport. They also made a trip down to Reedsport to visit Steve and LaRee. While there they had to get some big foots. They came home on Thursday. Glad they made it safe – even if Jayse got a speeding ticket – grrr!

Jaelee left on Thursday to go with her boyfriend Brennan and his family to their family cabin in Garden Valley. It’s about an hour away. She had a good time, they hung out by the fire, made smores, played games, went swimming, took walks and skipped rocks.