Tuesday, March 20, 2007
My Brush With the Law
Assorted thoughts from my virgin Jury Duty experience yesterday:
- The metal detector line is intense (25 minutes) and they make everyone turn in their cellphones and put them in a lock box. No cell phones all day. It was kind of nice, except when they let us out for lunch and told us to be back at two and I had no clue what time it was the whole time and ended up coming back like a half hour early to avoid getting thrown in jail or something.
- The first place you go is called the "jury assembly room" where they take your subpoena (it says "summons" on the card they send you but they insist on calling it a subpoena as if you have done something wrong) and i think throw it into one of those big lottery mixers, cause they start randomly calling people 40 at a time. I was in there for a couple hours, sitting amongst maybe 500 people I had never seen before, and yet there were these pockets of people chatting it up with their friends. I have two explanations for this:
- Some people were clearly assigned with their friends, as they were talking about a party they had both been to and all the things that "Scott" and "Frank" had done
- As for the others- do you remember in high school whenever you would randomly be in a setting with kids from others schools, how the cool kids would somehow magnetically gravitate towards each other and be making fun of everyone else within the first 15 minutes? It's kind of like a grown up version of that. Um, not that I wasn't cool in high school or anything.
- They give you a little questionnaire about whether you can be a fair juror, and one of the questions on it is "would you be more inclined to believe the testimony of a police officer just because of his or her job?" This one totally fooled me- I figured they wanted me to answer yes? I'm still a little baffled. So I glance over at the questionnaire of the platinum dye job lady next to me, and she went with no, but does it make me a bad person that I happened to notice that her "have you ever been convicted of a crime" answer was yes? I'm guessing drugs. If you had seen her face, you would understand. Anyway a little instructional video that comes on a good 45 minutes after you have filled out the form informed me that the judge specifically instructs you not to believe the testimony of a police officer any more or less because of their job, and the question is whether that is a problem for you. But I had already written the wrong answer with one of those golf pencils onto that carbon paper that makes like 4 copies, so there was no turning back. I figured best case scenario it would disqualify me.
- Finally, I get the call into the courtroom. We arrive and the judge is just hanging out cracking jokes with the bailiff, reading us a little speech about what an important part we serve in the legal process. Meanwhile the defendant and his comb-over public defender are quite possibly peeing themselves. Before turning it over to the prosecutor, the judge goes over the charges- Armed robbery and weapons possession with a side of criminal consipiracy. Victim less crimes if you ask me but it wasn't looking great for our defendant.
- The judge turns it over to the prosecutor who may or may not have been older than me, but definitively could not remember her opening line, got the date of the "alleged" crime wrong, and could not pronounce the names of her first two witnesses. Going for her, however, were the fact that the victim, several eyewitnesses, and no fewer than 12 cops were lined up to testify. Comb-over public defender stood up and named the guy's sister, uncle Johnny, and some girl named Kim as his witnesses. Credit to Lynne Abraham for sending in the C-team on this one, Ryan Moats will do when your offensive line is 12 cops blocking Kimmy from the block.
- I was in the second group of jurors and happily, my questioning never came- we were taken to another room and informed by the bailiff mid-afternoon that the defendant had "taken the negotiation offered to him" which I suspect means we will not be hearing from him for a while.
- They let us go and paid us $9. Yup, $9.
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Scott and Frank were crazy in high school. Remember that time freshman year when they got so drunk fell off the roof?
Why didn't you tell the judge you were a racist?
Why didn't you tell the judge you were a racist?
you should have pissed your pants and constantly masturbated. everyone knows that gets you out of jury duty... or is that the army?
# posted by 
: Tuesday, March 20, 2007
: Tuesday, March 20, 2007
Since I have never been summoned, I appreciate this vivid description. I especially love your acute observation about cool people gravitating towards each other. That explains why you and I have never really hit it off. Nerd.
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