Jury duty

[hudebnik]

So Monday night I checked the Web site and learned that I was to report to the courthouse on Tuesday morning. Not the courthouse across the street from my nearest subway station, to which I've walked for previous jury-duty assignments, but the one farther east in Queens, near the Jamaica train station. Still, Google Maps said it would take 27 minutes by mass transit and 35 on foot, so I walked it -- actually around 30 minutes. Went through the metal detector, handed my summons to a guard who handed back half of it, and sat down in a large room. Within a few minutes there were about sixty of us sitting there, and somebody welcomed us over the P.A. system. They started a video about how the jury-trial process works and how important it is for ordinary people to participate in the system, and then another video (with terrible audio: the background music was triggering some kind of low-frequency resonance or feedback that almost overwhelmed the spoken text) about implicit bias. And then they switched the TV to "Let's Make a Deal", which I hadn't seen in years: the studio had been remodeled for COVID with about twenty clusters of one or two seats each, widely separated and each with a semicircular desk around it. Anyway, I opened my laptop and started doing Google-work.

Eventually "Let's Make a Deal" gave way to "The Price is Right" (similar studio set-up). The lady at the microphone started calling names, and about fifteen people formed a line and filed out to go to some other room in the building. I went back to my work, and after a while there was another announcement that she would call us all up in alphabetical order, we would hand in our juror ID cards, get a certificate of completion, and go home; the case we had all been assigned to had reached a settlement. So I walked home in time for lunch. A relatively painless morning that fulfills my jury-duty obligations for the next six years.

Comments

[dewline]

I remember being disappointed that my own calls to serve ended in similar fashion. It would have been an interesting experience, and I was actually looking forward to it.

[ilaine]

Now this is hilarious - I am in the same jury summons as you but my number has not yet come up. It is within a dozen of the end of the batch so I may not end up going in at all

[hudebnik]

Yes, I'm sorta curious, having never actually been on a jury. I don't think I've ever been as far as voir dire so I could be thrown out summarily (I fully expect) for having a Ph.D. in mathematics.

I was discussing this with my mother, who after voting and driving in the U.S. for sixty years has never even received a summons to jury duty, much less been on a jury. I think this was my fourth summons.

[cellio]

I've been called three times and all ended in different frustrations.

The first time (criminal) I was seated -- as an alternate. That meant I was there for the whole trial, which was fascinating in various ways, and for the informal (rule-breaking) jury discussions during it, which was horrifying in various ways, but they I was kicked out when deliberations began. So I didn't get to participate in the end. I don't know what would have happened if a juror had then gotten sick; would I have been called back? We weren't sequestered.

The second time (civil) I was seated and they swore us in right before lunch. They told us to go get lunch and then we'd get started. When we returned from lunch they told us the case had been settled and sent us home.

The third time, we all sat around in the pool for several hours before they announced that the single case that had been on the jury-selection docket for that day had just been rescheduled, so they sent us home.

Someday I would like to actually make a difference.