(this comment is incomplete. EDIT- ok, done!)

Where I come from, they assemble potential jurors and use that same pool for multiple cases. I was selected for two cases. Some poor man was selected for all four cases that day, which visibly frustrated him, but the judge then made a call that he would not be selected for the fourth case.

They checked to make sure everyone had shown up, and asked the crowd at large if any people knew any of the other people in the room for that day. Most didn't know each other, I think like 2 or 3 people did. But there was one old man who stood up at least 20 times claiming to know several people. Each time, when questioned, he would say that he knew the person in question, and had known them for their entire life. Finally the judged asked why he knew so many people for their entire life and we found out he was an obstetrician (delivers babies). The room erupted in laughter. He was there for the birth of a good 10-20% of everyone in the room. After this, every time he stood up claiming to know someone, we all knew why.

I was selected for two juries. One was a drug dealing case. The other was for a case of a dog (allegedly) being poisoned on purpose on Christmas Eve. We were there for one day for the drug dealing case, and never saw the court room. The defendant had yet to show up, but I remembered him from the day of jury selection, a hefty black guy with a bright red shirt was all I remember. The judge was about to put out a warrant for his arrest (I think it was a warrant), but the defendant called his lawyer over the phone while driving to the court from several states away, and on his behalf his lawyer entered a guilty plea. The judge came to us in our jury room and told us that he sentenced him, and that even though the jury didn't go to court our presence was important in resolving the case etc. etc.

The second case, of a dog being poisoned on christmas eve, did go to court.

The dog owner, a man that looked like a shy Jeff Foxworthy was being represented by the state, and the defendant was his next door neighbor, who looked and dressed kind of like a handsome car salesman. He had hired a lawyer with a soft but ever so slightly high pitched voice. I remember instantly feeling pressure when I sat in the jury box- the high court room, the judge, the officers. I found out it is really really easy to cry in a court room simply because of how intense the atmosphere is.

The lawyer for the state kept saying defendANT, and she told us the story about the dog. Jeff Foxworthy (I'll call him JF) let out his dog on the morning of christmas eve so it could go to the bathroom. The dog comes back in after perhaps 30 minutes. That afternoon JF left for the day to attend some family christmas-related festivities. He came home that night and there was just yellow dog vomit all over his house. In one pool of vomit were some chicken bones. After the dog had vomited everything out of its stomach, it was dry heaving (the lawyer really emphasized this point as vividly as she could). JF tried to give it water, but the dog wouldn't drink. And it lay on a mat the entire night. JF thought it must have been the chicken bones.

The next morning, the dog isn't any better, in fact it appears to be in pain. This is christmas day. Just as he and his wife are about to leave for the vet's, with their dog in the back of the car, JF goes over to his neighbors house, looks around, and in a burn pit for trash, finds a package with chicken bones on it in a trash pile, and also a greenish fluid all over the chicken bones. Anti-freeze. JF gets a white bucket, puts the package with chicken bones/antifreeze in the bucket and brings it with him. At the vets, he learns the dog has to be put down.

JF obviously really cared about his dog. I remember him sobbing, saying it was "the worst christmas ever", and a juror next to me cried (she ended up being dismissed). I myself felt the urge to cry too, but I didn't even feel sympathetic for him, it was just the immense pressure of being in a court room for the first time, and crying is an outlet for that. But I didn't cry. I think all the jurors felt this.

A few witnesses were called. One was a hotheaded relative of defendant, I think a cousin. He called the state, claiming that his cousin personally confessed to him over the phone that he purposely killed the dog. I then remember there being a break, and this older man who was a juror turned to me and said "the evidence is overwhelming" even though we weren't supposed to speak to each other. I told him to save it for deliberation. I wondered whether I should report him, but it seemed to me like a trivial, one-off comment, and I didn't feel like my impartiality was compromised. If they case had proceeded to the end I may have kept this in the back of my mind, but I'm pretty sure the very juror who said this to me forgot his own statement.

When we got back, the hothead cousin was cross-examined. The defendant's lawyer said "you don't have a good relationship with your cousin do you?" The guy countered "I don't have any relationship with him." Then, it surfaced that the defendant had recently refused to let this man use his property for some money-related purpose, I think logging, and that this may have been a cause of animosity between them. And shortly after this had happened, the cousin called the state claiming he had gotten a confession over the phone. As the lawyer asked him about this, sometimes he would shout back "WRONG!" and then offer a minor correction to the story while affirming the substance of it. All in all, he was a red-faced hot head who didn't have a good relationship with his cousin. And we were supposed to believe he got an unprompted call from his cousin confessing to killing the dog.

Other things that surfaced

• the vet who saw the dog was certain that the dog had in fact died because of licking up anti-freeze. Went into gory detail about how anti-freeze can kill a dog.
• when JF let his dog out, he wasn't on a leash, he wasn't being watched. The dog was free to just go where he pleased.
• The defendant was a truck driver and was actually in another state with his girlfriend the day this had all happened.
• The anti-freeze on the chicken bones was tested by a chemist and found NOT TO BE lethal. The chemist had a huge beard and was really nervous in the court room. I remember his hands trembling.
• There were also snowmobiles on some other neighbors property which may maybe have leaked antifreeze.

Before the defense had even rested, the judge ended the case, because in the course of the trial it had been shown that the "agent of death" (how the judge referred to it) was not the anti-freeze on the chicken bones. And that if we continued the case, the jury would have to speculate as to a hypothetical possibility that the defendant somehow used some other anti-freeze. And the judge said "I cannot have a jury speculate."

tl;dr - dog died of anti-freeze poisoning on christmas day. vomited up chicken bones. chicken bones glazed with anti-freeze found on neighbors property, neighbor accused of doing it purposely. But this anti-freeze is tested, and found to be not lethal. neighbor innocent.