PT.2
The person in charge of the jury, seated me. There were 2 forms in front of me to fill out. My hands were shaking so bad that I had trouble filling out the juror form. I think it was barely legible. Normally. I’m not aware of my hand tremors, though other people are. In times of stress though, the hand tremors can be worse.
It didn’t occur to me that I could ask for help in filling out the forms until I saw a woman helping a prospective juror help fill out her forms (though she had a broken right hand). The only time someone offered to help me fill out a form was the last time I voted, which my hands were trembling and had trouble filling out the form. Fortunately, one of the election workers came to my aid and helped me fill out the ballot.
Anyway, back to the court. Once the forms were filled out, we waited. And waited. Finally, after 2 hours, the court officer led upstairs to the courtroom. We all took our seat in the audience section. One of my co-workers came to sit right next to me in the courtroom. They drew names to empanel the first set of 18 jurors to go through questions. I was not one of them fortunately, although my co-worker was.
We broke for lunch and then the afternoon session began. Once again, names were drawn at random. I was one of them. That really started things going downhill for me.
I still had one of the forms I had filled out (in triplicate, naturally). One of the court officers wanted us to separate the forms before we came up into the jury box.
As I walked up to the court officer, my hands were shaking. I took my place in the jury box. It did not get better from there. I took my seat and questions from the prosecutors and defense attorneys commenced.
The judge said the goal is not to embarrass us and that if we wanted, we could speak in private. Looking back, I probably should have taken this route, but I did not.
More on the questioning and its aftermath.