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jury duty ahem, publius? posted by: horsebeater 11:18 7.16.10 I just spent 2 days on cuyahoga county jury duty. got voir dire'd on an eminent domain case and a civil case, but didn't get put on a jury. the best part is that it was during the group stage of the world cup, so me and 10 or so other guys, when not being voir dired, got to watch matches. a long overdue thread posted by: publius 21:04 4.14.08 i had jury duty about two months ago and have been meaning to post about it ever since, but just haven't made the time...until now. i had never had jury duty before (one of the effects of never staying put for very long) and i was intrigued to observe the process from a vantage point that was not the movies or television. cynic thought i may be (try as i may to work on that, i'm beginning to think that it's something close to hard-wired), i believe whole-heartedly and unreservedly in the jury system and the opportunity it affords anyone and (ideally) everyone to participate in what can truly be called democracy at a demonstrably meaningful way. this is coming from a guy who doesn't usually vote and has no real problem with that and will engage in a debate about it if you like. but i don't see any wiggle room on jury duty. at my appointed time i showed up at the kings county court and sat in a very large room with, i would guess, close to 1000 other citizens. we were given a standard walkthrough of how to fill out the various parts of our juror id cards and what to do with them once we completed them. then we watched a short video about the jury process. then we waited. if you think about it, there aren't very many public situations where you know that you will be somewhere for at least an entire day and all you can really do is sit around and wait. jury duty is one of them. you can't make it go any faster. you can't get angry and ask to speak to the manager. you can't decide that the line is just too long and you'll get that quart of milk tomorrow. you're stuck there in a way, unless you've spent time in prison, you probably haven't been since you were in high school. this brings out interesting sides of people. some people feel the need to get chummy with those around them and moan about how much of an imposition it is to be on jury duty. some people sit silently and engage no one, but by their demeanor you can tell that they are all but screaming "i'm very important and don't have time for this shit". some people start talking to themselves and giving off the same vibe as the silent ones. some people sit quietly and read a book, more than a little amused at the degree of self-importance we tend to carry around with us (that would be me, if you were in any doubt). what really struck me was how, almost without exception, jury duty was seen as a terrible burden. if you didn't know better, you could have been excused for thinking that some of these people had just been drafted. i understand that people are by nature going to be more interested and engaged in their own day-to-day lives than just about anything else, but you would think that, once you've accepted the fact that you've been called to participate in one of the fundamental processes of our governmental system, you could see your way clear to adopt a certain philosophical sense of civic responsibility about the whole thing. maybe those people were all the silent book readers, because pretty much every discussion i overheard was either a bitch session or a sharing of strategies to get dismissed early and not have (heaven forfend!) actually get selected for a jury. me, i wanted to be on a jury. and i would eventually get my wish. the selection process itself was not all that interesting, with the exception of people putting their "get out of this" strategies into effect. the number of potential jurors in our pool who felt that they could not be impartial about a simple personal injury case was ridiculous. every time one of the attorneys asked another question of us, at least one person had to go outside and confer with them, and so be excused from the jury pool for that case. this actually benefitted me, because of the 25 or so people in my pool, i was the 3rd from last to get my name called. during this process we were given some disjointed facets of the case. we knew it was a personal injury case. we knew there was a family element, as the woman who was suing was the first cousin of one of the defendants, in whose house she was living as a tenant at the time. we knew the accident took place in 2001. we knew someone involved in the case had worked for verizon. that was about it. once selection was over we were sent back to the central jury room to wait to be called. when we were, were told to return in a week for the start of our trial. that was somewhat annoying. i'm all for doing my civic duty, but i had hoped i could at least keep it contained with a few contiguous days. but so it goes. we all left and exchanged a few awkward words with each other, and that was that. when we arrived back at court the following week, we were taken into the jury room and we waited. there would be a lot of sitting in the jury room and waiting over the course of the next few days. the first thing to do, of course, is try to get some kind of read on who your fellow jurors are. the first thing was pretty clear - i was the only male on the jury (well, there was one other guy, but he got himself excused pretty much as soon as the bailiff came into the jury room the first time, for some reason or another). the other jurors are, as follows: 1. a hispanic woman, i would day mid-20s, who always seemed a bit nervous and uncomfortable. unfortunately, due to her randomly assigned juror number, she would be appointed the foreman of our jury when it came time to deliberate. 2. a butch-dyke white woman, probably late 30s to early 40s, who had graduated from law school but was now a dog-walker and something akin to a dog whisperer (though she had nasty things to say about the guy who has the dog whisperer show on tv). she was continually complaining about the effect this trial was having on "her clients" (the dogs? their owners?). 3. a young black girl, probably 22 or so, who was the definition of a princess, in the daddy's little girl sense of that term. she could have been the older, flightier daugher on the fresh prince of bel air. or one of the girls in clueless. 4. an older black woman, probably just shy of 50, from jamaica who was quite level-headed, had some interesting points to make and stood her ground when she felt she was right. she also worked at verizon, and i found it a bit odd that since they specifically asked about that during selection that they let her stay. but they did. 5. a black woman, probably about 30 or so, who was nice enough but was constantly dealing with some personal problem or another on her phone, which really weren't supposed to be in use in the jury room. 6. an older black woman (mid 50s?) who was the designated alternate, but was with us up until we started to deliberate (now, being an alernate on a jury? that would suck) 7. me...as you all know, i got bitches on my jock in east detroit cause they think that i'm a motherfuckin' beastie boy. i'm going to pause this tale here, with our stalwart heroes introduced and ready to spring into action and fight the good fight...to be continued tomorrow...