Jury duty and how it went.

I've been on jury duty for the past 3 1/2 weeks on the Commonwealth vs.
Michael "Mucko" McDermott case. They sequestered us for 2 nights and we
got out yesterday. The jury found him guilty of 7 counts of 1st degree murder.
Unfortunately, I was an alternate so I didn't get to deliberate but I
strongly agree with the verdict.

Here's the link to the Boston Globe article about the case:

http://www.boston.com/news/daily/24/mcdermott_verdict.htm

One of my friends asked in an email:

> And how's your head taking it?

I just replied:

I'm glad they made the decision they did. They did the right thing. I
hope my nightmares will stop sometime soon.

The good thing about this for me yesterday was that I got to speak to the
daughter of one of the victims. I found her family name and number and it
ended up being her uncle's house but she was there. She remembered who I
was. I made eye contact several times with her in the court room over the
past few weeks. I wanted to tell her it was ok - that we weren't going to
let him get away with this. She told me "You don't know how much this
call means to me." That was worth the whole three and a half weeks.

Yesterday during the lunch break I got to be the "hug fairy" to the
people who had just reached a verdict. This was before I knew what the
verdict was. One of the women just cried in my arms. That made me feel like
I had a purpose in being an alternate.

Maybe in a while I will look back on this as a good experience but right
now it's too close to me. I just want to get back to my regular life.

This affected me almost as much as September 11th did - maybe more in some
ways. I got to take some things I learned from that tragedy and apply it
to this one. Weird, huh? What I mean is - I did my chi gong several
times a day while I was on jury duty. I made sure I slept a lot, ate
lunch and generally took good care of myself. I learned more about
setting boundaries for myself emotionally. I had to or else I'd crack.

I broke down a few times but not a lot - maybe 3 times over the last
month. Yesterday I lost it when I saw the impact statements that the families
made after the verdict. Luckily, I was at home watching them on the news and
Steve was there to hold me while I cried. My feelings are slowly beginning to
come back. I felt like I had to shut them off for a while.

I guess that's the long answer to your question about how my head is.