Juror 239

I had to report for jury duty this week. It's one of the draw backs of living in the city. There are more trials, and less of a pool to pick from. This is the second time in about 3 years I've had to report.

Sallie and I have been incredibly busy lately. More so than normal. Our calendar often has a morning appointment and a night appointment, even on weekdays. So I really was hoping to get cut early, take a nice long walk home, and get some time to myself.

That was not to be.

I arrived around 7:45 am, 15 minutes before you are supposed to report. I filed in, waited in 4-5 lines, all different check-ins, looking into the hundreds of faces of people just as irritated as me that they were there.

The jury assembly room is a long, shotgun style room, with four old tube TVs that don't get great reception. 400-500 people stand in four lines to finally get the privilege of sitting down. Essentially, everyone looks like this:

There were a lot more people than the last time I was there. My hopes were high that the best case scenario would happen and I wouldn't be selected at all and released by 10 am.

Story luck kicked in full gear and out of the several hundred people in the juror assembly room, my number was called first. As I approach the front counter, I hear someone utter that there will be 78 jury candidates. This is an issue. This means this is a huge case. This also means, there will be no one going home early, and there's a chance that I will be held a second day for further questioning.

We funnel across the street and to the fifth floor of the Civic Courthouse. Last time I served, there was a ton of waiting around at this point. We were sent to a second jury assembly room where I got some solid book reading done.

This time, we were in the courtroom within 30 minutes. And it's a huge courtroom. And being the first number called, I have to lead everyone in and take the lead seat in the jury box.

We're told quite blatantly that this is a murder trial with two defendants. My throat immediately goes to my stomach. We're assured that we are not sentencing. This is merely a guilty / not guilty trial and the state of Missouri will decide what to do next, but we're also told we'll have to look a lot of crime scene photos.

It was a surreal setup. These two young men were waiting to hear if they were guilty of a robbery that went wrong, yet the judge and lawyers were joking around, the candidates were joking around, the mood in the room was light. It just felt wrong. I felt like I was staring into the faces of two of the kids that I taught only 6 years ago.

The candidates were asked questions by all three of the lawyers, trying to weed out bad jurors. Sallie's newspaper career saved me again. I did recognize the faces because this murder was all over the Belleville News Democrat. I knew too many details, and when I revealed that, I was skipped in questioning the rest of the day.

This interview process is so weird. Candidates immediately jump into a "me vs you" mentality. They know as long as they look more crazy or opinionated than you do, they get to leave.

I had an old hippie tell a story about how he hates cops because one time he was chased around his bus by a guy with a butcher knife and the cops found pot on the hippy. So they arrested them both and put them in the same cell.

There was a girl that just kept raising her hand and saying, "I don't agree with that law." Eventually the lawyer asked her why she didn't and she obviously didn't have an answer and just broke down crying. They had a small meeting up by the judges stand, where the old judge handed her tissues and she sobbed for 10 minutes before finally taking her seat again and letting us proceed.

They couldn't let anyone go early, mostly because they didn't want people that just didn't want to be there to remember what the jurors that left said and try to mimic it.

I was worried a bit that I would still be chosen. Of the 78 candidates, around 10 didn't speak English as a first language, they were obviously eliminated. Another 10 or so had been victims of violent crimes, and 5 claimed to really just not trust cops. (All of which were white, nicely dressed men, which I found odd)

They kept us until our final recess at 4:25. They told us to come back at 4:50 for the final selection.

Everyone came shuffling out of the elevators at 4:50, hoping to be told to go home. Unfortunately, nothing was decided yet. We kept getting told, "A few more minutes." Phones were starting to vibrate as rides were outside waiting and employers were wondering if the night shift employees would show. But we kept getting told, "A few more minutes."

It was a small hall, no air flow, punctuated by a broken water fountain that seemed to be teasing me. Inside my head I'm screaming to let me out. There was even a brief moment where I would've volunteered to be a juror if they just let us go.

We waited. Waited. Waited. The door opened, and it was one of the lawyers who had time to go downstairs and fill his cup with water. He came back, and we waited some more. Finally at 5:30, we're called into the room for the final announcement.

I wasn't chosen, but you still can't leave until your juror number is called and you're handed your $12 pay stub. This is when the Me vs You Mentality turns into a Band of Brother mentality. Except for our 12 peers that had to march back into the courtroom, we 66 survived and escaped together. Since I was the first number called that morning, I was the last number called for the pay stub. I finally left the building and met a very hungry Sallie at 5:50.

That's the cost of doing your civic duty. I'm just glad this time, I still get paid by my company because there were a lot of waiters and hourly nurses that gave up their real pay for $1.20 an hour.

I'm Marketable

I'm going to be in some SluCare marketing material. Here's the draft. It's sort of hilarious to be called "a runner" since I actually hate it so much. I sent a two page story and this is what Slu's marketing edited to.

Getting Back on Track:
One runner’s journey from injury through recovery

Dr. Adnan Cutuk practices orthopaedic sports medicine and shoulder surgery, but his practice isn’t limited to high school, college and professional athletes – many of his patients fall into another category. 

“The weekend warriors,” Cutuk said. “The people like me who love to play sports and are not necessarily competitive, but don’t want to give it up.” 

Dan Story is one of those people. Story, a runner, tripped during a jog in August 2011, breaking his leg and tearing three ligaments and his hamstring. 

Story’s injury was so severe, he was rushed to the emergency room. There, he was treated by Dr. Cutuk.

“Even when I was riding the morphine-induced state, Dr. Cutuk was able to explain everything to me in a way that made sense,” Story said. “He didn't lie to me. He told me it would be a long recovery, but that we would get me back to my former state.”

Story had two surgeries over the next two days to fix the bone and reattach most of the ligaments. He spent five days in the hospital. 

“Dr. Cutuk and his team took care of my health needs, but they were also conversational, and remembered details of my life,” Story said. “Anytime I had a question, I would call his nurse, Melody, and within mere hours I would have a call back and an answer to my question.”

His recovery was slow, but with physical therapy Story was able to get around on his own. Still, however, he was unable to run. 

So in April 2013, Story had another surgery to reattach the final ligaments and restore full function to his knee. Within weeks, he was walking again. 

Story continued to check in with Dr. Cutuk and Melody regularly. Last February, Story had his final appointment. Two weeks later, Story went on his first run since the injury. He now considers himself recovered.

“It was a bittersweet appointment when Dr. Cutuk told me it was the last time I needed to come into SLUCare,” Story said. “He told me good luck, shook my hand and said I would probably be able to ice skate by next winter.”

The Weekend That Wasn't to Be

Sal and I went to Columbia for True / False again this year.

We've been every year for five years now. It's a mini-tradition where we go to our college town and live like royalty with almost no cash. It's a cheap, long weekend before that desolate, no time off, period between March and September.

This year's planning started out rough. We should've known it from the start. The pass we normally get allows us to see unlimited films from Thursday-Sunday. They raised the price this year and it would be over $350 for Sallie and I to go.

For what is supposed to be our "cheap" trip of the year, $350 is getting into hotel for 5 days somewhere else territory.

So we got the Simple passes which allows you to see 10 films from Friday to Sunday.

We went up Thursday night and stayed with some family, who made us a bomb-tastic Italian seafood dish and fed us some delicious bourbon. We went to bed around midnight, knowing that we potentially had 5 films on Friday. (One of the drawbacks of the Simple Pass, you have to cram more into less time)

As we woke up, our phones were blowing up with messages that a deadly blizzard was heading our way. We heard exaggerations of six feet of snow, and ice, and dogs and cats living together. The weather channel was changing their prediction of how much and when every hour. Weather does not easily scare us, so we brushed it off but kept it in the back of our mind.

We thought, if nothing else, we could leave early Sunday morning and beat the storm, which was supposed to arrive around noon on Sunday.

We saw 3 and a half films on Friday, the best of which being a film called 20,000 Days on Earth. We loved the film, but it's so filled with thoughts and emotions that we need to see it again to try and unpack it further.

Knowing our Saturday schedule was light, we planned on hitting our favorite Columbia spots then. So on Friday, we just grabbed appetizers at a few places in between films.

The last film was not as advertised and we left a little early, hoping to catch a good night sleep at the hotel.

... until 3:45 am where I had the most violent food poisoning I've had in years. Not to go into too many details, I didn't know which end things were going to come out of. The answer is, both ends.

I went back to bed around 4:15, feeling physically exhausted from my heroics.

We woke up around 7:30 am. I checked our movie schedule as Sal checked the weather. The storm of the century was due to hit around 8 pm on Saturday night instead of Sunday afternoon.

We decided to see the first two films of the day, eat a quick lunch at Flatbranch, and beat the storm.

One of the films, The Overnighters, was interesting. It was about a preacher who was housing a bunch of homeless people in his church. It was interesting because it was one of those documentaries where Sal sided with the town that didn't like it and I sided with the preacher. (Until the end that is) There were great points on both sides of the story and the film did a great job of not showing a bias toward either.

Our second film was not very good. We left about 45 minutes into it and got on the road.

Our windshield was freezing a little on the way home, but generally, the weather was underwhelming. We probably could've stayed at least for our last film on Saturday.

We did find out some people got stuck in Warrenton the next day when 70 was shut down. So I suppose we made the right choice, but who would've thought our little excursion to Columbia would be cut short and yet we would make it through an entire vacation in Minnesota in the dead of winter.