by Ronald Reddout

Created on: April 05, 2009

One of the Lucky Ones

From my perspective, I must be one of the lucky ones - people who have lived long enough to have been able to serve on numerous juries, but haven't as yet. Since I became an adult over 40 years ago, there have only been two times in that long stretch where I have ever been the recipient of a jury summons. One summons actually resulted in my serving on the jury through the final decision rendered by that jury. The other time that I was summoned, I served on the jury, but I was not to be part of the jury that arrived at the decision in this particular case.

My first experience with serving on a jury occurred when I was in my mid-twenties and living in Wichita, Kansas. I received the jury summons and then, of course, I had to let my supervisor at work know that I would be out at least one or more days. So when the day came for me to arrive at the courthouse, there were at least 100 or more persons with me awaiting their opportunity to be questioned by both the Defense lawyer and the Prosecutor. I honestly don't remember how far down the list I was, but, if the court went down the list alphabetically by last name, then I was in the latter half since my last name begins with "R".

However, for some reason I did make it to one of the juror chairs early on and, after being questioned by the Prosecution as well as the Defense, it was determined that I could stay as one of the jurors for this case. Actually, the jury selection process went rather quickly. Then the trial began and actually lasted through most of the afternoon before we were asked to begin deliberations. As you may have guessed, this was not a major case in terms of the amount of evidence submitted, although it did involve the resolution of a question as to whether or not the crime of "statutory rape" had occurred. At the time, the term "statutory rape" had just replaced the crime's former designation of "indecent liberties with a minor".

We, as the jury deliberated for the remainder of the day, which turned out to be about one and a half hours. Then the jury members were let go with the admonition not to discuss this case with anyone outside the jury room. The next morning we jury members reconvened to continue our deliberations. During this time, we did request, on two separate occaisions, that evidence presented at the trial be read back to us as we weighed our final decision. At around noon on that day, we reached our decision in this case and notified the court. Then we were led

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