Here is a summary of events involving jury duty yesterday at the courthouse here in Grundy County.

I show up to the courthouse about twenty-five minutes early and ask where in the hell I’m supposed to go for jury duty. I’m told that I have to go upstairs so I begin the climbing of way too many stairs and find that there are already 5 people sitting in the chairs outside the courtroom. I look at the “historical” mementos stashed away in glass cases such as old road signs and farm equipment. Several more people show up and eventually there are about 20 of us standing around and the five or six sitting in the chairs. A guy comes up the stairs and walks over to the doors and tries opening them for two minutes. Yeah Genius, we’re all standing around because the doors are open. Good grief. Eventually we are let into the courtroom and an old lady takes roll call. I’m the last fricking person on the list. We get sworn in and lined up and ushered back down the stairs to another courtroom. Why we couldn’t have started in there to begin with I don’t know.

We have to sit into the pews in the order of our numbers so I’m in the last seat of the last row and the questions begin. The first question was “who do you live with and what do you and the people you live with do for a living?” They eventually get to me and I say “I live with my grandma who’s retired and I’m self employed in the pro wrestling business.” The judge follows with “I have to ask this, do you wrestle or do you do other things?” I responded with “I do whatever is needed of me, mostly manage.” The guy in front of me turns around and starts asking me questions and wanted to shake my hand. Come to find out, I went to school with his nephew all my life and he is now a wrestling coach for some school north of Morris. They continue on and on with pointless questions about whether we new the lawyers, the defendants, people who worked in law enforcement etc. Out of the 40 of us, about 35 said they knew someone who was in law enforcement because they have seen the sheriff around town. I was beating my head against the back wall after the 5th person because the judge always asked “well the fact that you know what the sheriff looks like since you’ve seen him around town, will that bias your opinion in this particular case?” and the answer was always no. Why in the hell even mention it unless you want to be there all damn day??? I had a cousin in the jury pool who later came up to me and asked why I didn’t mention that my mom and dad worked for the Illinois State Police. I answered with “it was 20 years ago and it wouldn’t bias my opinion on this case and I didn’t want to waste more time.”

Two hours into this thing they get around to asking “does anyone know someone who has been involved in a criminal case?” The case we would have to listen to was a DUI case. This was my out. I answered how my uncle had his license taken away due to several DUIs and then eventually died while driving drunk. The judge asked me if the fact that my uncle died while drunk driving would bias my opinion in the case and I said maybe. I had to go into the judge’s chambers and talk with him and the lawyers and they decided that since I couldn’t guarantee that I wouldn’t be prejudiced that I wouldn’t be on the jury. Three hours of being in the courthouse and I was finally free to go home.

The most amazing thing of all was the fact that the guy on trial looked exactly like Harley Race in the autographed photo I have hanging on my wall. I should have used that as my excuse to get out of it earlier.

I may have to go back tomorrow and go through it again. I have to call and find out.

Good day.