Out of 550 potential jurors 70 were assigned to the same case as me. After 5 hours 13 jurors were seated - I wasn’t one of them. Serious charges of continuous sexual assault of a girl younger than 14 plus indecency charges. Based on the lawyer’s questions it will be a tough case.
@ronguest That seems extraordinarily efficient jury selection (or maybe we’re just extremely inefficient here?).
Two cycles ago I was in a pool of about 60 for a child sexual assault case and it took 2 1/2 days to pick a jury (thankfully, I was not chosen; it sounded like it was going to be brutal from the questions we were asked). The last cycle, Nov/Dec before last, I was in a pool for a home invasion/burglarly case; we started at 60 potential jurors, the second day another 60 or 70 were called in, and after 3 days we finally had a jury of 14 (we were sworn in and dismissed for the day at 5 PM on Wed, then had a week of trial).
@smokey Wow - that seems ridiculous. The previous time I was down was for a capital murder case, as serious as can be, and still the jury selection completed the first day. I was on the jury... I know here lawyers are only allowed a certain number of “strikes” to eliminate potential jurors. Not sure if that makes a difference.
@ronguest The second time, I know we lost at least a dozen people the first day due to language difficulties, school, law enforcement connections, or other excusable reason (and then I think a lesser number of the second group the second day for the same). That time they also decided, after the initial general questioning, that they were going to do all follow-up questioning individually, which slowed things down a good deal compared to the prior time.
I don’t know if we have a limit on strikes; the prior time, I was potential juror 50-something and they filled the jury only 1 or 2 people before me; the most recent time, I know we had people from both groups on the final jury.
At any rate, kudos to your county for making jury selection speedy, because we all know from Tom Petty’s official anthem of jury duty that the waiting is the hardest part ;-)