Jury duty can have lasting impact on jurors

A couple of weeks ago I got a letter in the mail with a distinctive return address. Most people know when a letter from Melissa Meeks-Phelps arrives that they have been summoned for jury duty.
Now, I am not one of these people who will look for an excuse not to serve. I want to be chosen for jury duty. I think since I was 18 in 1982, I have only received four jury summonses.
I have only been required to show up one of those four times.
The one time I showed up I think I would have been chosen but the person took a plea deal. The late Joe Reid was the Chancery Clerk at that time. He couldn’t resist telling us that the accused saw the potential jurors and changed his mind.
Joe Reid was always picking on me. He would always ask if I was married and I would say no. He always told me that “I have some good men over in jail who need a wife.” I would always politely refuse. Not throwing shade to anyone but I didn’t then and don’t now need a matchmaker.
When I first started covering sports in 1998, 20 years ago, I wrote something wrong in an article and Joe never let me forget. I do miss him.
Now back to the jury summons from two weeks ago. I was a little stressed about this one with the changes happening here at The Panolian. Even before I had to call in Friday to see if I had to report, I was wondering if I was going to have to actually use work and get out of the summons. Not because I didn’t want to do it, but because new president David Magee was out of town and I had to get the newspaper put together.
I had a board meeting and Mondays are just not great for employees to be out of the office on other business. However, when I called Friday I was passed over again. They assigned us sequence numbers and I was 182. I didn’t even notice that when I first got the letter.
On the phone, only those 1-160 were to report. Oh well, I guess I will get another letter in 10 years or so and will see if I am ever going to serve on a jury.
I love to watch jury shows on TV and read about them in books, not necessarily the law shows, but when the jury is actually deliberating. I wonder will I go along with the rest of the people or will I be the lone holdout. Will I be so sure of my conviction that I would stand up or against someone?
I wonder what the jurors think about one or even six months or a year down the road when they have decided someone’s fate. Are they good with their decision or wish they had it to do again without all the stress of the trial weighing on their shoulders?
The jury from the Quinton Tellis trial in Jessica Chambers’ murder come to mind. Those people were sequestered three hours from home. They heard a lot of testimony but had no connection to anyone in the trial or Panola County. They just wanted to get back home and what was normal to them. One can hope they took their duty seriously, but who knows. Hopefully, someone has done some scientific study about the effectiveness of juries from different counties.
Because of their failure to come to a unanimous decision, now another costly trial has to be held. Will another jury from three hours away be any more effective?
It will make for great novel material one day I guess.
Until then, our Monday morning running around routine continued as usual.