I was summoned to jury duty on tuesday, and I had to get there by 8am. If you are reporting to this…read moreplace for jury duty, don't forget your yellow card that comes in the mail. There is security at the entrance, so they will ask you to pull out all your electronics out of your bag to put in a basket that goes through a machine. You get cleared, and you proceed to go up the escalators to the assembly room where you check in, and wait. (Make sure to check in every day that you go in, so they know that you were there).
The staff were all friendly with happy-go-lucky faces at 8 in the morning. Once you check in, they tell you where to sit to wait for your bailiffs. There was coffee in the back, and magazines to look at on the right hand side of the room. The projector screen at the front of the room has a few slides playing on repeat about what to expect and how much you will be compensated. Here in gwinnett county, it's $30 per day, that comes after a couple weeks in the form of a debit card. Around 9am, we were assigned seating arrangements, and I got seated one seat to the left (I guess I got lucky, haha). Anyway, we waited another hour or so before we were called into the courtroom. There were about 40 of us, and they only choose ~12 people for the jury.
The attorneys asked everyone general questions, then asked individuals specific questions, which took forever. We took a 15 min break where we went back to the assembly room/used the restrooms/ etc. Then went back in around 11:50am. The attorneys continued to asked questions til 12:30pm, where we took our 1 hr lunch break. I ate something in the cafeteria downstairs which ill review as well.
Back to the court room, they ended up only asking 28/40 people individual questions because they had already had an idea of who to choose to be in their jury. They took 30-40 min to decide the final 12. Those who were not chosen went back to the assembly room, and got dismissed. By the time I left, it was already ~3pm.
Before, if you were dismissed from jury duty from one panel, they would have you wait for the next panel to open up, but as of recently, if you get dismissed from the first panel, you are done for the rest of the week. You wont be summoned for jury duty for another two to three years. Hooray! We are all great citizens.
All in all, minus the waiting, this was a great experience, and I hope to be selected to be part of a jury one day. The building smelled like the airport, and was really nice and neat. There were restrooms everywhere, so dont worry about not being able to find one.
On a side note: if youre like me and you forgot to call in before jury duty and missed a day, you can just call to reschedule. But dont miss it on purpose. I literally forgot til the day of.
Have fun!