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Day Seven of Jury Duty. It’s also Launch Day!
I wanted to be a juror since before I was old enough to vote.
I wanted to be a juror on a criminal case.
What do they say? Be careful what you ask for.
In the forty-one years that I have been of legal age to serve on a jury, I’ve only been called in once before. FYI, for those who think if you don’t vote, you won’t get called, well that’s a myth. I have voted in every election since I turned eighteen, even the local ones, and I wasn’t even sure what a comptroller did. I only received a notice to report to the courthouse one other time. I arrived bright and early, but before lunch the court officer said, “Patricia Dunn, dismissed,” or something to that effect.
When I received my second official letter requesting my appearance at the courthouse that is just a few blocks from where I live, many of my author friends said, “Jury Duty! But your book is launching next month.”
They knew that the month that your book launches is a crucial time. There’s a lot for an author to do to promote a book. Social media alone becomes a full-time job.
But I wasn’t worried. I was sure I was going to be dismissed. Not only am I a writer, I write about crime and murder. I also had just come back from the Police Academy for Writers. I’d been told that lawyers don’t choose people who have too much knowledge of how crimes are investigated. That is, in real life, not in TV land.
On June 20th I watched the video explaining how juror duty works, and what were the responsibilities of a juror, and then I waited to be dismissed. Only this time when my name was called – I wasn’t dismissed. I was sent to another room where I waited to be interviewed for an upcoming criminal case.
When I entered the courtroom, I sat in what would be my chair for the next several weeks. To my right, at a desk standing several feet above the rest of us, sat the judge. To my right, at two separate tables, sat the prosecutor, and the defendant and their attorney, respectively. After the judge and both attorneys questioned me, mostly about if I would be able to base my judgements on the evidence presented, and not let my personal feelings bias me, to which I responded Yes, the judge acknowledged I was a writer and said, “You’re free to write about anything that you want to from the case, but not until the trial is over.”
Now here we are on the seventh day of the trial, and it’s the day HER FATHER’S DAUGHTER LAUNCHES, available for purchase. Am I excited? Of course. Nervous? You bet. But today I won’t be thinking about whether people will like my book, whether I will get good reviews or not, whether I will sell enough books to get another book deal. Not today.
Today, my attention will be on the trial and the evidence presented, so that when both sides rest their case, I will be ready to take my seat with the other eleven jurors and deliberate.
And what about my book? Well, there’s a lot more to do: readings, conferences, signings, social media posts, and as my father used to say when someone asked him – are you done? – “I’ve been Dunn all my life, but I’m far from finished.”
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