I have been called twice for jury duty. Each time, I spent a week as part of a "jury pool" but I never actually served on a jury. I never even got as far as voir dire. I was a bit disappointed.

My wife was called for jury duty, and got selected for a trial on the first day (Monday). The trial started right away, and was finished by the end of the week. It was a civil case, a wrongful-death lawsuit. The defendant, a driver, didn't dispute that he was responsible for a pedestrian's death. The only question was: How much should the widow be paid? The jury had to estimate, if the victim hadn't been struck, how long would he have lived, what would he have earned, and how much of that would he have contributed to his wife's upkeep? Although the man was in his 60s, he was self-employed and had no plans to retire. However, he was in very poor health, with heart disease, so he would not have been able to work much longer. So the jury ended up giving the widow much less than she had asked for.

My wife told me all about it after the trial was over, and it was a fascinating story. (She was prohibited to discuss it while the trial was going on, and she stuck to that, with my full support.)

This kind of trial is usually not reported in the newspapers—they aren't considered newsworthy—yet the legal issues can be quite intricate and interesting.

Maybe I should have been a lawyer.