Most people cringe a little when they get a notice from the Sheriff that they are being called for jury duty. Not me. I loved it. For me, jury duty was almost like a vacation. I could sleep in late and still be in McDonough by 9:30 am. Then I would get home earlier than usual. When I first started at Delta, they would take our jury pay, but later they decided it wasn’t worth the trouble. So I was getting my regular pay plus my jury duty pay for mainly doing nothing.
When your father is the Sheriff, you are not going to be seated on any criminal case. Any decent defense attorney will strike you, and it happened to me every single time. Nothing personal. It’s just business. In those days, they would have criminal cases and civil cases on different weeks. So, I knew I was just killing time when it was a criminal case week.
That wasn’t true for civil case weeks. I remember the first case I got selected for was an auto accident. The first question they asked was if you had State Farm insurance. That eliminated over 50% of the jury pool, but not me. State Farm was doing well in Henry County in those days. Anyway, it turned out to be an easy case. It was so easy that the foreman said we should just relax and have some snacks for a little while, so it looked like we deliberated longer.
My second civil case was different. Once we got in the jury room, we had to elect a foreperson. Somebody asked if any of us had ever been on a jury before, and there were only two of us. The other person said they absolutely would not be the foreman, so I was quickly elected. I was beginning to think this one wasn’t going to be nearly as much fun…and it wasn’t. Our first vote was 9-3, which quickly became 10-2. But, the two were not going to budge, and they said we should just return to the courtroom and say we couldn’t reach a decision. I said that wasn’t going to happen. After a couple of hours of discussion, we got to 11-1 and then quickly to 12-0. It felt good.
I think I’ve done every kind of jury duty there is. I’ve been on the investigative Grand Jury and even got called once to Federal Court jury duty. There were a couple of lighthearted interactions. Once I was in Judge Ben Studdard’s courtroom, he stopped the jury roll call for us to catch up a little (we went to school together). Then once I was in Judge Chafin’s courtroom, he mentioned that we were almost certainly related somewhere back. He opined that somewhere in the past, his branch dropped one of the ‘f’s because they were the lazy side of the family. The most memorable time was when I was in the jury pool with Senator Herman Talmadge. For once in my jury experience, I thought I might not be the least likely person to make the jury. Well, we spent the day being defense attorney strikes. We got to one situation where they needed two more people, so they were going to call two people up into the box and interview just those two (typically, there are 12 in the box at a time). So, they call my name first, and I stand up and start making my way to the front. Then they call Senator Herman Talmadge. I was thrilled, and I thought this was going to be fun. But, the defense attorney was not having it. He immediately said something along the lines of: “I believe we have all we need, your honor; you can excuse the Senator and Mr. Chaffin.” Dang! Well, I still got paid, and I even got home early.