Jury Doodie

Last week I had the pleasure of spending an entire day at the County Justice Center to fulfill my civic duty as a potential juror. I should have known the day was doomed when I had to wait in line for 20 minutes just to get through security. Once that debacle was finally over, I waited in another line to get into the Holding Pen. It was too early in the morning, and I hadn't had enough coffee, to realize the beginning of a trend.

I found a seat, filled out my 1 page questionnaire, and tried to figure out where the coffee was. The recording the night before said there would be coffee. I didn't see any sign of a bean, powdered creamer, or stirring stick anywhere. So you require me to be here at 7:45 AM, forego an entire day of income, sit in an uncomfortably full room of strangers, without even an awful cup of Sanka to choke down? Unbelievable.

I finally had a little time to read my book and catch up on emails. Productivity. Ok, I can live with this. And then I was interrupted by the Jury Commissioner introducing some really old guy who was/wasn't/played one on TV/may have been a Judge. He droned on for 20 minutes about something really important, I'm sure. And since half of the room was now asleep, they thought it would be a good idea to turn off the lights and show us a video about Jury Duty (in case we were confused about why we were there).

Once every single person in the room had their official juror number and badge, they asked us to line up numerically. Then the Commissioner's assistant confirmed the importance of Natural Selection when he went through the list and asked about 80% of the people to move because they were in the wrong spot.

But wait, there's more. They marched all 86 of us out of the Holding Pen, down the hall, to...the elevators. Each elevator held about 10 people, and I was lucky #82. The best part is they had to rearrange us again when we all got to the 4th floor. There was genius at work here, I'm sure of it.

FINALLY in the courtroom and the Judge started talking about the Constitution, our obligations as jurors, the players, the accusations in the case, yadda, yadda, yadda. There was no Lennie Briscoe. No Jack McCoy. No Abbie Carmichael. No dramatic music. This was nothing like Law & Order. What the hell?

It was 10:15 AM. For two hours he asked everyone some general questions, noting their answers and their pleas to be excused.

At 12:15 PM, he dismissed everyone for lunch. We all went back to the cafeteria on the 1st floor and stood in line. Again.

At 1:30 PM we went back to the courtroom and the very first thing the Judge did was excuse about 20 people. Seriously?! You couldn't have done that BEFORE lunch? You didn't need to consult with the attorneys about these people - it was evident to everyone in the room that they shouldn't be selected. Either this was a plot to get more people to spend money in the cafeteria - or - the State that's raking in money is too cheap to provide coffee to the Judges, too.

Now the real fun began. And by fun, I mean torture. It was time for the attorneys to begin their lines of very specific questioning. They were focused on the 25 people in the Jury Box and, because I was potential Juror #82, I had to sit there and listen to each of these people talk about themselves and why they weren't fit to serve on this jury. It was a domestic violence case and I was absolutely amazed that there were several women who said they had personally experienced domestic violence but promised they could be impartial. I'm sorry, are you human?! I knew the instant I learned the charges and saw the defendant that I couldn't be impartial. Maybe I'm just an asshole.

For two more hours, this went on. And on. And on. They would excuse some of the people they had questioned and replace them with people from where I was sitting in the gallery. And then they'd question those new people. For someone whose tolerance of stupid people is exceptionally low, this was one of the worst places to be stuck. I thought I was going to lose my shit.

At 4:25 PM, they finally settled on the Lucky 13. It took 64 potential jurors for them to select the final panel. Don't listen to people who tell you not to worry, that you'll be out by 9:30 AM - it's a lie.

And remember to bring your own coffee to Jury Duty. Seriously.