Jury Duty
Tuesday, March 31st, 2009I got a letter from the county telling me that I’ve been summonsed for jury duty. Now I’ve always thought that jury duty was a pretty important part of our governmental system. I also happen to work for an employer that pays me while I’m on jury duty. So I’m in the perfect position to serve on a jury. Although my views of government, law, and society probably don’t mesh 100% with most people I still think I should serve on a jury if I’m able to. So unlike many other people, when I got my letter I didn’t sigh, I didn’t roll my eyes, there was so resignation. Instead there was a slight tinge of excitement. Then I started reading the letter.
The first thing that caught my attention was the list of general qualification you must have in order to serve on a jury. Number 4 reads: “[You must] be of sound mind and good moral character;”. Seriously? Good moral character? I’m not even sure to say to that. There seems something altogether Un-American for the government to decide whether or not my moral character is “good” or not. My first taste of judicial annoyance.
Then came the questionnaire. According to the form, I was legally required to fill out the questionnaire. The questionnaire includes questions I would normally never answer if asked on any sort of official form and here was the government telling me I had to? Suddenly this whole jury duty thing is becoming more aggravating. So I filled out (most of) the questionnaire and headed downtown. Then my day proceeded:
8:30 a.m.
I show up at court, a full 30 minutes late. The nice lady at the front of the jury room is taking our filled out questionnaires. I go to hand her mine, but instead of taking it she scowls at me like my step mother and tells me that I can’t come in with shorts on. Wtf?!? She turns my paper over and points to a line that reads “Proper Clothing Required: All persons entering the courtroom should be dressed in clothing reasonably befitting the dignity and solemnity of the court proceedings. (No Shorts).”
Clothing reasonably befitting the dignity and solemnity of the court. Now we’re just getting fucking ridiculous. You want me to sit in a room full of hundreds (yes, hundreds) of other people for (possibly) the entire duration of a work day and wearing a pair of shorts is asking for too much? Do you know what annoys me about all of this? The no-shorts, the required personal questions, driving in morning traffic downtown to be at court by 8:00. What annoys me most is that I haven’t done anything wrong. In fact, I could have easily sent back the questionnaire in the mail and disqualified myself from having to even show up. I could have given the system the finger… but I didn’t. Jury duty is a responsibility that I agreed with and want to participate in. But my local government doesn’t seem to realize that citizens serving on juries, while being a civic duty, is something we need to encourage and make less painful, not more painful.
But alas, instead I was sent back to my car where I thankfully packed some pants for work in case I got off early. A quick walk to the parking lot, a change in the middle of said parking lot, and a walk back to the courthouse and my day was ready to continue.
9:02 a.m.
I arrive back in our home-for-the-day in time here a judge explain all the rules and whatnot of jury duty. Apparently that line about “moral character” that annoyed me is a purely subjective qualification that is left up to the individual. It sounded to me like this is the “out” you can use if you really, really don’t want to serve on a jury. Not quite as bad I guess… but still…
9:11 a.m.
A court clerk has taken over and is explaining our compensation. “Six dollars is not a payment. It is a compensation for your daily expenses included transportation, parking, and meal costs,” the nice lady explained.
HA! Let me say that again. HA! This is exactly the sort of bullshit that bothers me. Parking alone is costing me $10! Now the court does have parking available to jurors for only $6 (coincidence?) but you’ve gotta get a spot before it fills up. I find that to be complete bullshit. The city/county knows damn well how many court summons’s they send out, they should provide parking for every single person they require to come down and serve.
9:13 a.m.
We do have wireless service available in the jury room as well as in the cafeteria! yay. 
9:15 a.m.
“It’s 9:15, you’re on break until 9:35.”
9:33 a.m.
Spent 20 minutes working on this entry. Then this pretty cute girl wearing stylish pink glasses named Ashley sat down next to me. I spend a few minutes trying to get her to agree to vote “guilty” and “death penalty” to whoever was on trial if we happened to both be selected for a jury and ended up on the same jury together. She’s not seeming to buy it.
10:12 a.m.
Ashley recognizes a friend of hers amongst the croud of would-be-jurors. He joins us. Flirting instantly made more difficult…
11:58 a.m.
We got let out for lunch at 11:30. A quick walk took me to Central Park Pizza of N.Y. for a lunch of (obviously) pizza. Being a New Yorker in Texas I seem to gravitate towards a camaraderie mindset when anything NY comes up. I don’t like that and try to consciously battle it. Blindly favoring something simply because it references a geographic location is, in my opinion, weak minded. That said, Central Park Pizza is pretty damn good. I don’t know how it would compare to other pizzerias if I was actually in NY, but in TexMex country it fares wonderfully.
Walking around downtown (which I’m going to do some more of in about 5 minutes) is making me feel pretty good. It’s adding fire to a blog entry I started cooking up this weekend. It may actually get typed out and published… we’ll see. But for now, I’ve got an hour to kill and I’m gonna do it pretending to be downtown city folk.
1:13 p.m.
Back from lunch I fire up the netbook and work on this entry some more. Ashley returned 10 minutes later with her friend, Greg. We then proceed to spend the next 2 1/2 hours bullshitting and wasting time.
3:35 p.m.
The decidedly evil lady who has been calling people all day long to go onto whatever is step 2 in the jury selection process comes out again. This time she doesn’t call names, but instead informs us that there is one courtroom that is still deciding whether or not they need jurors. So 65 of us will stay, the rest will be released. First batch of names, I’m not on it. Second batch, still no Kane. Third batch: victory! I get to go home. I was never asked a single question. I was never considered. I was never needed.
In my elation I didn’t even stop to think about what she had said to start off the release, 65 people were sticking around because a courtroom hand not finished doing whatever it is that they need to do in order to require a jury. Why the fuck doesn’t this happen the day before?
I started off thinking that serving on a jury would be kind of cool, I still think that as an American it is a civic duty and one that we should all partake in and appreciate a legal system that allows for peer review. However I now also understand why people grumble so much when they get a summons for jury duty. Jury duty puts us knee deep in government inefficiencies that plague the government at almost every level. Why does something that should take 2 hours take an entire day?? Why does jury duty “reimburse” the artificial $6 which is so close to zero that we may as well call it that ($6 is in fact too small a sum for me to drive to my bank and deposit)? Why do I get a summons to appear 3-4 weeks prior to the date and when I show up I get impression that the courthouse employees are surprised and scrambling to figure out what to do with us? And why am I told that I am required to provide personal information about myself when not a single lawyer and/or judge needed me to do any more than sit and look pretty for the entire day?