Jury Service
Today, for the first time I found myself in the Central Criminal Court, located at the historical Four Courts building by the Liffey. Despite or perhaps because of being a beautiful historical building it was small and unpleasantly cramped and the 100 or so potential jurors all with our green letters in hand were very likely breaking several fire safety regulations. The trials being dealt with were murder trials which didn't fill me with enthusiasm. There were five trials on the court docket, two of which required juries and one of which required the judge to issue a bench warrant for the arrest of the absent defendant. I was interested how much emphasis the judge placed on making it clear that the accussed was to answer the alleged crimes.
Before the first jury was selected the Judge remarked that it was an unusual case in that it would be extremely short, only one day, tomorrow Tuesday (and he made it absolutely clear that he had a flight on Wednesday morning so there was absolutely no way the trial would run over). The Judge also stressed the importance of jurors informing the court if there was anything that might prevent them from serving before they were sworn in. I was among the twenty picked out of the hat for this jury and found myself sitting in jury box. It was kind of unnerving but as the jury only required 14 people and only one or two jurors were declined I was soon back in the crowd waiting for the second jury to be chosen.
The second case consisted of several counts of attempted murder and violence and was expected to take as much as three weeks, starting the following Thursday. Many people were quick to make their excuses, some of them particularly vauge but given the large crowd to choose from the Judge kept his life simple and let off anyone who asked. About 50 people later they eventually had their fourteen jurors and much to our surprise we thanked for our service and told we would not be required to return every morning for the rest of the week, as had been expected.