The Trial, day 3

It's over. We were told that there were some more "matters" that the court had to deal with without the jury present, so we waited from 10:00 until about 11:30 when we went into the court room. The judge immediately told us that there was a "matter of law" that forced him to discharge us - that our services were no longer required. He thanked us for our service, and told us that we were free to go. And that was it.

We were later told that it had something to do with something that we heard yesterday - something that someone had said, that the other side did not have a chance to rebut. We're not sure exactly what was meant by that, but we suspect it had something to do with the testimony of one of the witnesses. He started to tell us something during cross-examination, at which point the prosecuting attorney objected, citing hearsay. The defense attorney told the witness that he couldn't tell us what the other person had said, just what he did in response to it, but the witness ended up telling us anyway. Nothing was said at the time (though the defense attorney looked a little frustrated), but I think that may have had something to do with it. I certainly don't know the law well enough to know for sure, but that was the only thing that happened yesterday that was controversial in any way.

I really enjoyed my time on the jury, for two main reasons: I got to see the way our legal system works in great detail, and it gave me time to finish Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix - all 760+ pages of it - in about four days.