Jury Duty

Instead of taking a vacation this summer I got chosen for jury duty. I think I learned more in the past 6 days than I did in my summer school class for graduate school! All kidding aside, I truly learned so much about so many things. Since the case is officially over I can now freely talk about it. Basically this case was about drug trafficking, specifically meth. There were 4 defendants and two are not US citizens, they are from Mexico. The one with the most serious charges has been deported twice, has previous felonies, has served jail time on other offenses and today we found him guilty on 3 of the 4 charges against him. He will more than likely have a long jail sentence for these crimes. Already he has been in prison since last August. He is just a few days younger than me. For some reason that hit home with me. He has a wife and children. His children have more than likely been exposed to drugs being present in the house as well as weapons and ammunition just sitting around. Literally, a bag with 1,000 rounds of ammunition was found on the dining room floor during the search warrant. It is so disturbing. The other three men were the drivers in the drug bust. I learned how drug traffickers work, their methods and roles they play and how a deal goes down. I also learned about "cutting meth" and actually held a one pound bag of meth (it was in an evidence bag). Wow, that sure was something I never thought I would know so much about. Hopefully this will be information I will never need to know again for anything in my life. I really feel sorry for the poor security guard who was just going to work. It seems he arrived for work and parked right next to the car with the drugs just as the whole drug bust went down. Poor guy. Talk about being in the wrong place at the wrong time. I wonder if they let him go home for the day to recover from the shock?? Probably not. This was not a very good area of town. Anyway, that was it in a nutshell. When the jury walked in to render our verdict my heart started pounding so hard I thought it would burst right out of my chest. Then my hands began to sweat. I did not doubt that we came to the right conclusion, it is just such an awesome responsibility when people's lives are put into your hands. Seeing them all lined up to hear our verdict was a very intense moment. I am glad it is over. I am glad I can get back to my summer with my boys. Tomorrow I get to watch Travis at baseball camp. Even though it is three hours long and in the very HOT Arizona sun I will be so happy to be there to watch him grow and learn new things. Going through this experience has made me look at our country in a new light. We are so lucky to live in a country where we have so many rights, including the right to a trial jury of our peers. I always knew the role of having a jury was important in our country, but being a part of a jury just gives you a whole knew perspective on how our democracy works. I will be thinking of so many new things this year as I watch the fireworks on the Fourth of July and I hope you will too. Happy 4th!!