Jury Duty

So I’ve been waiting to have something truly blog worthy come into my life and then BAM…jury duty happened this week. Now it’s not as though I was surprised that it came, as I received the summons last month but still. So here’s a tale of my fun at becoming a prospective juror this past Tuesday.

Now to be honest, the adventure began the night before as I was all set to call to see if I was required to come in and…totally lost the summons. I tore up my room looking for the stupid thing and I couldn’t even call to talk to a real person and you get nowhere with the automated service because they need the specific numbers from the summons to do anything, so you see I had an issue. I also have to apologize to my friend Mae who unknowingly called in the middle of my panic. Sorry if I wasn’t at my best. Anyway I did remember that, thankfully, work had made a copy of the summons so I knew I could get it once in. So I was able to call the first morning and, as very lucky as this was, I wasn’t expected in because if I would have been I was going to get in almost two hours late and I think that would have gone very very badly. However come that night I made the call and it turned out I was needed the next day.

I spent the day down at the main courthouse in downtown L.A. right across the way from the Disney Concert Hall and in number 2,097,250 why I enjoy where I live I was able to take the Red Line from right by my house in the North Hollywood area right to the Civic Center, where the courthouse resides so the commute was fairly painless.

Now my previous jury duty experiences were a weird mixed bag and didn’t properly prepare me for this go around. My first go at it was a few years after high school and I spent two whole weeks at the Torrance courthouse reading books and listening to my walkman (HA! A walkman…). It was brutally boring and I wasn’t called once into a courtroom. The second time was while I was working at Concordia 6 or 7 years ago and I went in a couple days but I remember it being fairly painless.

So this leads me to Tuesday and I was ready with book and over 12 hours of podcasts to see me through the anticipated bore-fest. After orientation, they began calling random names to be assigned and it was comedy. First of all, I’m a stickler for listening to instructions and following through things so it bothered me just a bit to hear them explicitly state, “Please say ‘yes’ once you hear your name called” only to get half of everyone say “here” with a few people who didn’t know what to do when they were called-it was strange. And on that, I had a weird fascination with hearing how people were responding as a third of every respondent sounded incredibly perturbed/unhappy to hear their name and a number of us audibly laughed when one guy responded with, “Yeaaaaah IIIIIIIII’m here” as despondent as could be uttered. Oh and since I’m a “name” guy two did pop out at me. Maybe I misheard but I swear someone by the name of Golden Flower was called and then I saw that everyone does get called for jury duty as Jack le Bauer (his full name, I suppose) was there so when he’s not saving the country from terrorists he’s serving on juries.

After a few rounds, yours truly was called up the third floor with 35 of my closest friends. After being sworn in, the court went through the process of jury selection, which I found fascinating, actually. On one hand I love the diversity of the city I live in and to hear all the different things people have done and experienced was really cool. There were also a few contentious moments as a couple people tried to cite reasons to be excused that were not flying with the judge. You know how invariably someone will say, “Hey, I know how to get out of jury duty. Just do so and so.” Yeah, don’t try this in a real court because if the judge smells any BS you’re in for a verbal beat down…and that’s exactly what happened at one point as the judge did state, very sternly, in the middle of questioning “Are you TRYING to get out of jury duty!!” which was responded with befuddled whimpering (Befuddled Whimpering playing at Coachella next year, btw).

Now by going through the jury weeding process, the thing that really threw me off is that there were several people who were dismissed even though their background would seem to fit the case perfectly and on the other side, a few people got in who basically answered no questions. It’s as if the lawyers were picking people out of a hat. Now I know they’re under no obligation to give reasons as to why certain people are dismissed but it seemed so random. Could the lawyer reader of the blog (i.e. Alli) explain how all this works because I came away scratching my head.

Anyway, after the dust settled, I ended up in a select group of four who were not called to even answer questions so I felt like some kind of observer more than anything else. It got a little tense for us, as were started looking at each other very nervously as names were being called at the end. All I know is that I would have hated to have been called as an alternate juror. It was a trial that could have lasted 10 days and if I’m taking 10 Vacation days to sit on a jury, then I want to be a legit juror not an alternate (all apologies to the alternate juror readers of the blog).

Although having said all this, I actually would have been interested in being a juror for maybe a short three day case or something. Is there something wrong with me? It’s just one of those things I haven’t done that seemed like it would have cool to go through the process and see our legal system in action. Oh and “The People’s Court” does not count.

Alright, folks…that’s about all I have. Fun times and observations from a prospective juror. Until soon (maybe)…