The importance of jury duty

By Jeff Weinstein

A few weeks ago I received a summons to appear for jury duty. I’ve received seven or eight since becoming eligible. I’ve never been picked to serve and of course I know the reason why, but I wanted to share my experience anyway. This particular summons came from Judge Calhoon in the 3rd Judicial District Court. Judge Calhoon’s court covers not only Henderson County but Anderson and Houston counties as well. As a lawyer that has practiced before each of the county and district court judges, I can attest that we are lucky to have the quality of judges we have in Henderson County. Our judges are fair, respectful and mindful of our time – three really nice qualities that don’t necessarily exist in other places.

The case was what we call a CPS Termination Case. Child Protective Services was seeking to terminate the parental rights of two parents to three children. Very sad. I don’t do any family law or child custody work – it would probably give me ulcers to have to advocate in this arena. The minute I felt like a client had neglected or been physically or mentally abused I would lose it. Not a good place to be if you are supposed to be someone’s advocate. I’m not going to go too much into the case or my thoughts on the case because it continued forward – just not with me as a juror. These types of cases are very delicate and need to be handled with the utmost kindness and compassion for the child/children involved, that is why a good legal team need to be on hand, as a juror you need to feel that the case has been said fully and professionally in its entirety. Firms like Peters and May, with the features they offer, may be the right legal avenue to take in cases such as this. All I know is that a child needs to feel safe and secure in the right home.

I’ve known for many years that people don’t like to take time out of their busy schedules to attend jury service. Judge Calhoon said something, however, that I hope he doesn’t mind if I repeat for the rest of my professional career. He said that serving on a jury was in his opinion second only to actually serving in the military. Wow. That’s a pretty cool way to think about jury service. It is true that our system of justice only works because people serve as jurors. The framers of the Constitution certainly understood the significance of a right to trial by jury over allowing the King to do whatever we wanted to do. I’ve also known for many years that you don’t get picked for jury service, you get eliminated from serving by answering questions honestly which ultimately tells the advocates what side you tend to lean. If you lean too hard, an advocate will try to have you removed from serving without you ever even knowing.

The trial lawyers involved in this case all had very different styles. They were each very effective in their own way and did a good job for their clients and for the Department of Family and Protective Services. It was hard to sit through their questions without wanting to participate more than I did and I’m pretty sure I participated more than what they wanted me to. I’ll be interested in seeing how the trial turns out. For now, I’m very proud of the folks that came out to serve as potential jurors. Did they have other things to do? Sure. Is it something people get excited about? No. Is it the second most important thing you can do to protect this Country – Heck yes it is. Good point Judge Calhoon.