Personal Narrative: My Court Observation

Setting up the court observation was easy for me because my dad is a bailiff at the courthouse and could easily tell me when a bigger court would take place. Earlier in the semester, I went to a common plea court and I was bored so I left. I had to wait until my dad found out when there would be a bigger court. He told me in the middle of March on the 27th, there would be a General Sessions Court. I do not have school on Monday’s so I only had to take off work. Since I know all the bailiffs at the courthouse, I did not mind who assisted me. My dad assisted me for the most part because his job for that day was to sit in the courtroom. People who are victims sit on the right side of the courthouse, but because everyone knew me and I was in there for a class I could sit on the right side so I could sit with my dad. My dad had to go downstairs with a
McIntosh was a lot more lenient than Judge. Buckner. At 3:00 is when the jurors came in and they started right away to pick. There was a total of 50 people who got called in for jury duty. In 15 minutes, they had gone through every single person and asked if they were married, to who, and what does their spouse do for a living. They also asked where they were employed also. After that, they put all the names in the computer and the computer selected the names 1-50. In about 35 minutes they had got all 12 picked with 1 alternative. The first time I shadowed, Coach Driggers, which is one of the bailiffs answered one of my questions when I asked where everybody was at because there were only five people in there who did not work for the courthouse. He told me, “Court is not like what it looks like on TV, so you have been watching too much TV. This is about as packed as it gets.” I was very surprised to see only us in there because I thought it was going to be slammed packed! This General Sessions court had a lot more people just because it had all the people who had broken their probation, their families, and the