So last week I finished a four-week stint on jury duty. It was the first time I'd ever actually been put on a jury (had been summoned several times, but never got called in), and boy did I pick a winner.

The trial was for a guy from Boise who was accused of shaking his own four-month-old son to death. If you think that sounds like a bad way to spend four weeks, you're absolutely right. The whole thing was emotionally grueling from start to finish. We spent the better part of one day looking at autopsy photos while pathologists told us exactly what caused the poor kid to die. In total, the prosecution took nearly three weeks calling every single fireman, paramedic, police officer, and doctor who ever interacted with the defendant. The defense lasted a grand total of 3 days and basically consisted of the defendant testifying for himself and three "expert witnesses" who were called in to explain how, even though the defendant had written a confession stating that he had shaken the baby on multiple occasions, including the day he died, the shaking "probably did not cause the death". If you want to know what type of doctors go around testifying on behalf of confessed baby-shakers, here's a hint - ones that come off as bat-crap crazy in court.

In the end, almost everyone on the jury agreed that we would have found the guy guilty by the 2nd day of the trial. Doesn't change the fact that most of us felt awful for him - he seemed like a not-too-bright kid who made some horrible choices that he'll have to live with for the rest of his life.

One weird side-note. When the defendant was cross examined by the prosecution, the prosecuting attorney went out of his way to establish that although the defendant had served an LDS mission, he had only served for 7 months. If felt like it was a weird line of questions that could only have been intended to make the couple of LDS guys on the jury think "whoah, whoah, whoah......he didn't finish his mission?????? He MUST be guilty." It was kind of a strange move, considering the prosecutor is apparently and ex-mo himself, and probably didn't realize that the other LDS guy besides myself on the jury had also left the church.

Anywho, I've done my civic duty for the year. Hopefully I never have to go through anything like that again.