I blogged last Fall about my first opportunity ever to be a witness in a trial.   Earlier this week I had something else happen to me that had never happened before in my entire life (I am about to turn 59).  I was selected to be on a jury at the Lackawanna Courthouse in Scranton, PA.  I have been in many jury pools and made it to the selected group to be questioned by lawyers to see which folks from the jury pool make it into the 12-seat box of jurors.  But never had I been selected to be on a jury.  It has been my assumption that all these years it is mostly because I was a Baptist minister.  But nothing prevented it this time.

I learned a lot of things in terms of judge’s instructions, rules for evidence, rules for jury note-taking, deliberation, video depositions, role-playing testimony, etc.  I learned how to work with 11 other people to talk things through in a tense kind of situation.  The case was a civil law suit in light of a car accident.  We decided unanimously in favor of the defendant.

As I sat there through the two-day trial, I wondered again at our country and system with all of its faults.  However, I thanked the Lord that in such cases, we can be judged by twelve of our peers instead of by some government bureaucrat or military figure.