So after 42 years, I finally reached a point in jury duty that involved actually showing up to the courthouse. I’ve gotten the summons twice before in the last five years, but both times my number never came up. The way it works out here is that you get a notice about a month in advance, stating the week you will be on the hook and telling you to call in or check the website the Friday before. If they say don’t come in, you check again on Monday morning and see if you have to come in that afternoon. If you don’t, you check that afternoon to see if you come in the next morning. And so on, and so on. It’s actually a gargantuan pain in the ass and you’re better off just being called in, which is what happened to me this time out.
I got called in for 1 PM Monday, and the rest of Monday was spent in hardships – basically people begging off the case because they were the sole caregiver, or couldn’t speak English worth a lick, or would lose their job, or had prepaid vacation plans, or what have you. Fair enough, start whittling down from there, and then on Tuesday get to the actual selection. Which was interesting to me, because they go through a whole bunch of questions that are basically yes/no, and even if you’re not in the box, you have to make a note of any “yes” so you can rattle them off when you do get called up. Only one or two people had this figured out and were able to promptly mention their nephew who’s a parole officer, or the time somebody broke into their car, or when they sat on a jury 20 years ago in San Diego and couldn’t reach a verdict in an embezzlement case.
We probably would have been done Tuesday except for the people who were plainly trying whatever shuck and jive they could to get out of it – not least the one woman who suddenly turned into Sammy Sosa testifying before Congress and forgot she spoke English. And the judge, who I loved, was Not Having It and was on her best Judge Judy are-you-fucking-kidding-me-with-this-shit. “Why didn’t you bring this up when we asked about it yesterday? How long have you lived in this country? Fourteen years. Did you go to high school in this country? Yes. Did you go to college in this country? Yes. Did you graduate? Yes. What was your main language in high school, what were you taught in? How about college? What do you do now? Radiology technician? What language is spoken at work? I think your English will be sufficient for this case.” And a glare that added And sit your ass down. Gah. Fuck me with this no-habla-Inglais bullshit. Priceless.
I never made it into the box, which is good, because my desperate need to do shtick in public is probably incompatible with my need not to catch a contempt case. Not gonna lie, I did spend the better part of an hour trying to determine how close to the line I could get without a sudden non-working vacation in the gray bar bed and breakfast. Never came up though. We did have to go back in Wednesday because all the shenanigans people tried on Tuesday meant that we didn’t get alternates selected in a timely fashion, but for my trouble I wound up with the better part of a day off on Wednesday and time for a couple of movies, so that was nice. In fact, the week went so well generally that it’s feeding my theory that at this point, I just need to not go to work and I’ll be mentally fine. (Obviously the solution is retirement, but that doesn’t look all that financially feasible at present. Working on it.)