Dooty Now

I got summoned for Jury Duty. It's been done before. Previously, they just sent me home. This time I got to spend a whole week in and around court. Hot Diggety.

Here's the story:

I was in Batch One of two batches of jurors. Batch One got called and hung around for a while, batch two got called, then a few minutes later many came back into the waiting room swearing and fussing and making phone calls and all that. Seems they had to return the next day, and most were angry about it.

We waited a while longer, then were told we didn't need to go to our case, since it got worked out without us. Great, we get to go home now, right? Wrong. We get called into the same room as Group two, get sworn in, and told to return the next day. More swearing and fussing from the crowd.

So, next day we find out that they needed a bigger pool of people to pick from for this case. About 60 of us. For the rest of the week, they call people, send us on breaks and lunch and home. Friday comes, I haven't been called yet. This is getting really tedious. OK, so I finally get called. #54-I go through an interview, they interview a couple of other jurors, then I get some specific questions that I answer. The Judge talks to me for a while, people moan. Eventually, they tell me to go home.

The Judge was great. He had a lot of patience and care. Unfortunately, he seemed to think everyone was trying to get out of jury duty. That wasn't true. I certainly wasn't. A few other people commented on that as well. I guess that's understandable though. The Public Defender was a little silly. Looked like he watched (and was affected by) a little too much TV. The Prosecuter was angry and made more fuss than was necessary. He was not a pleasant guy. He demonstrated this several times throughout the week.

So, there were some people who went way out of their way to get out of doing jury duty. It was like they were trying to avoid the draft or something. I'm sure someone told them to be totally 'psycho', and they'd be excused. Worked for a couple of them. Didn't for others. The judge actually had the staff find another case for a couple folks to get transferred to. Boy, were they angry. Probably got out of the other one too. Want to get out of Jury Duty? Why? What if you were on trial? OK, so as far as I can tell, all you have to do to get excused is express an opinion, or demonstrate somehow that you have a brain. The 'sheep' were the ones they kept. "Yes, I can be a fair and impartial juror. No, I don't think about anything. I have no opinions other than those I'm told to have. Baa."

I said I had a problem with the law in question. I did-it was totally stupid. I also mentioned that I came in contact with police from time to time in the normal course of work. They seemed to want to convince me that I should 'take it back' and lie so that I could be a sheep on the jury. What a concept. Tut tut, they dropped me pretty quick. The folks they kept said things like: "I've been on trials before. It's really boring. I never listen." Great.

Justice is blind, and deaf, and incoherent. Welcome to 'merica. Hmm, OJ comes to mind, as does our current President. What do we expect, anyway? I don't know what would be a better system though. By the way, seems you about triple your chances of being called for jury duty if you're a registered voter AND have a driver's license in California.

thanks to Bill for the photo of a hangman's noose. And, I don't want to know why he had it in the first place.