So, after years of postponing, I finally have to go in and perform my civic duty. I had never served before, so this was an entirely new experience for me.
I didn't have any paperwork, but I knew today was my day to serve. I had recently been called to a court hearing for missing my jury duty last February, and I arranged the date myself. So I go in to get my official jury duty paperwork for the day. I am at the window and the lady asks me:
Lady: "You going to be here all day?"
To which I take a moment, look around, and respond:
Me: "Only if I have to"
Lady: "Well, you have no choice."
So this is how my day starts. Seems pretty fitting. Anyhow, I trudge my way through the cold to the court building, pick up an egg and cheese and make my way to my day's destiny. There's a long line to get into the building through security. It's like going to the airport and I have to remove my belt. Something I don't like to do, as then you have to hold your pants up while you walk through the metal detector and look like an idiot dressing yourself in a goverment building. Anyhow...
So you walk into a big room with lots of chairs and sit down. The mood is very somber as you look around. Everyone is wearing the same half-frustrated. half-bored face, and nobody is talking. Someone sits at a podium and addresses us, starting off with a schmaltz joke in the vein of "So, everyone excited to be here?". There were few laughs.
The first thing they do is show us a 20 minute long video on jury duty. I thought it was going to be somethign informative and possibly helpful. I was wrong. The first 10 minutes are used to show us a reenactment of the justice system in medieval Europe. I'm not kidding. Don't believe me? Well, I thought not. That's ok, because I took a picture:
Seriously. The rest is just time filler narrated by Ed Bradley.
So we go through a series of questions: has anyone been convicted of a crime, is anyone not a resident of Brooklyn, can anyone not understand what I'm saying, blah blah. We weed out the non-essentials and move on to being called for either criminal or civil cases. I pick up the court newsletter and get to work on the crossword, which I actually finish. I never have time to do that.
So I get called for a criminal case. They shuffle us into a court room with a judge, representatives of the city (DA and Asst. DA) an a defendant plus council. In this case, the man is being accused of holding up a cab. They call prospective jurors up to the jury box at about 20 at a time. I should say, before this, they asked if anyone had a problem being on a case that might go to the end of the week. I stood up and made my case, pleading that I was a freelancer that had been otu of work for a couple of months and would like to take a job that started on Friday. The judge was not sympathetic.
So I had the privilege of watching the first 20 people be questioned by the judge and council. It was questions like, where do you live, are you married and what does your spouse and/or children do, are you related to any cops or anyone who drives a cab for a living, have you ever been the victim of a crime, and so forth. The questions were designed to determine who might have a bias that would make them non-ideal to judge this case.
Since I did not want to serve as I had work to take, I decided that I wasn't going to answer any questions or divulge any information I didn't have to. In other words, the defense and prosecutor were looking for the people they thought would rule in their favor for the case. I figured if I said and impressed nothing, then I would be relatively unknown to them, making me less likely to be picked as neither one would know which way I might lean in the case. All they knew of me was that I was 27 years old, unmarried without children and work in entertainment.
So, alas, I was not selected. Here's to another 6 years of freedom. The system marches on.
