What's It Like to Go to a Juror Empanelling

Okay. There's only one case in English today. We got into a juror assembly room, watched a video in Chinese, then English (mouthing Chinese words) how the whole thing (morning part) is like. There were about 60-70 people. Next, according to your group-number(summon's right top corner), you line up to check your i.d. We waited to be called to get to the court.

There were not enought seat for all, some had to stand. The judge came in. Today's case was a forgery and bribery of a Hang Seng Bank staff. The judge expected it would end just after Chinese New Year. He decided to make it all morning sections 9am-1:30pm. Wow, I'm going to have low blood sugar or black out totally!

The first ballot picked, a young guy gliding out and went straight to the jury panel, was immediately challenged. [Warning: Each case is particular. I'm only guessing that the lawyer thought he was immature for this case.] Then some were picked and i.d. checked again. A madam requested an exemption because she paid the deposit for a package trip  already. [Warning: If you still insist to go for a trip after you received your summon, you might as well throw the money to the ditch. Not a smart move.] The judge exempted her. Another guy who didn't understand English other than "You are a boy." "Thank you." "I don't know." ... was exempted too. Usually there will be 7 jurors, but today they picked 8. My friend said one spare. Then there was a list of institutions for the picked jurors to look at and think carefully if they were related to these in any way. Could be you have Hang Seng Bank stocks. Could be your spouse worked in one of those. The first juror were called to standby when he declared his brother-in-law worked in Hang Seng Bank. Picked another one. Finally, if the accused had no objection to the jurors picked, the rest were released!

I went to the nearest Starbucks straight away and ... saw the the picked juror who had a brother-in-law worked in the bank already sitting there. Probably, we were thinking to ourselves "what a relief!"