Jury Duty

I am a big fan of jury duty. Honoring one's civic responsibilities is crucial to the functioning of a democracy, so I have always taken very seriously a lot of the things that people like to complain about: voting, paying taxes, sitting on a jury when called. The nation doesn't really ask much of us anymore--in a time of war there is no military draft, our taxes were not raised but cut, we have not been asked to compile steel or rubber or anything at all, we have not been urged to buy war bonds. Being a citizen of the United States has become one of the cushiest gigs on the planet, which is probably exactly why the few times we are asked to do something for our community, we get so damned grumpy about it.

Obviously there are times when the citizenry has stepped up in a big way--the aftermath of September 11th was, obviously, America at its best. And I've always been inclined to think that the way people grumble about jury duty was in the same spirit as grumbling about Mondays--it's just one of those things people say as idle conversation, but that for the most part, when Monday comes it's not really all that bad, you go and do your thing and then you go home and that's just how things are, no big deal.

Maybe things have changed; maybe all the wartime burdens we have not been asked to share have made us lose something essential in our civic spirit. Or maybe I just got a bad bunch of jurors, I don't know. But my most recent spin through the jury selection process was--there's really no other word for it--shameful.

I am sympathetic, to a point. The case for which we were being selected looked to be about as boring as it could possibly be: a stupid little auto-accident where one of the vehicles happened to be leased from a major auto manufacturer, thus leading that company's Sales division to be named as a defendant. For this, the court was anticipating a seven-day trial. When we were surveyed as to whether we recognized the names of any of the defendants or witnesses, the list of medical experts went on for about ten minutes. It was going to be a long, deadly dull case, the sort of thing that would cure an insomniac. I did not want to be seated on that jury. Particularly since I had originally been slated to go to the Criminal Courts building downtown, where there would have been a nice juicy crime to consider, but then at the last minute was diverted to this dull civil matter way the hell up in the Valley. (The courts aren't supposed to send you more than twenty miles from home. This was twenty miles to the dot.)

(Plus--the temperature in the Valley the last couple days was about 157,000 degrees. Celsius. And the air conditioner in my car just ran out of whatsit-fluid.)

California operates under a one day/one trial system (so does Illinois). The idea is supposed to be that when you report, if you are not seated on a jury by the end of that day, you are sent home and your responsibility to the jury system is fulfilled for at least twelve months. Since I haven't lived here for that long, my only prior experience with this process went exactly as advertised. About a month ago, however, a friend of mine was summoned and found the exception to the one day/one trial system: if you've been called into a courtroom but they have not been able to select twelve jurors and two alternates by the end of the day, then you have to return the next morning.

Between Chicago and L.A., this was my fourth (maybe fifth?) time through jury selection. And it sure seems to me as if the mere process of getting people out of the jury assembly room has become increasingly complex and time-consuming. Before anyone could be called to a courtroom, everyone who thought they might have an excuse had to make their case; medical excuses had to be reviewed by a judge. Never mind that most of those excuses are laid out in the summons form we were all sent several weeks before our reporting date; most people hadn't even bothered to fill out their names and addresses yet. You'd think that if it was so all-fired important for them to get out of jury duty, they would have done that little bit of work in advance so that they wouldn't even have to show up, but no--I guess this way they at least get one day off work, then get themselves excused without having to actually, you know, do anything.

All these preliminaries--only the first round of shirkers and malingerers trying to weasel out of their duty--took so long that by the time my group got called up to a courtroom, there was exactly enough time to seat the first eighteen people for consideration in the jury box, then send us all to lunch. With a ninety-minute lunch break, it was nearly 2:00 p.m. before a single potential juror was asked a question. Then we got dismissed for the day at 4:00. So let's do the math: we were called at 8:30, had ninety minutes for lunch, and left at 4:00. That's six hours total of working time, out of which four were completely wasted by the weasels.

So there's one obvious result right there: the preliminary round of eliminations takes so long that it's probably impossible to get a jury seated in one day, so that those people who are determined not to have their time wasted thus guarantee that those of us who are willing to stay and do what needs doing end up having our time wasted. As I said--used to be I always in and out in a day. Now, that no longer seems to be true. Abuses of the system always lead to the breakdown of the system, and penalties falling on the people who are trying to play by the rules.

I came back the next day, fully expecting that we would done by noon. Ho ho ho, it is to laugh. At the beginning of the process, the judge had volunteered to allow any juror who had an "embarrassing" problem to discuss the matter in private in the jury room; that happened at least half a dozen times, requiring the judge, the two attorneys, the clerk and the court reporter to disappear into the back for several minutes at a time. On at least three separate occasions, the judge asked the supposedly-fixed jury to rise and be sworn in, and suddenly there would be a sea of hands shooting into the air as people suddenly thought of a new way they might be able to squirm out from under.

The excuses became increasingly idiotic. "I just hate big corporations, man," one juror really did say, referring to the big auto dealership. "I'd be really inclined to go for the plaintiff 'cause I just hate the multinational corporations." And it became apparent, as time went on, that once a couple of jurors were allowed to get away with this nonsense, more and more of them decided that they would be allowed to as well. Hence the sea of hands.

But hell--I'm not crazy about the multinationals, either. And I tend to think that punitive damages are often excessive. I have all sorts of opinions that I could have trucked out, but I wouldn't have even thought to do so. Everybody has opinions; it's your responsibility as a juror to rise above them and judge the individual case solely on its own merits. You can't blame Wal-Mart for what Enron did, just as you can't blame Sony for the labor practices of Wal-Mart; and the fact that your cousin once filed a frivolous slip-and-fall lawsuit doesn't mean that the guy in front of you wearing the neck brace did as well. It's really just as simple as can be: listen to the facts, look at the law, do your duty and do it well.

Out of a jury pool of forty people, there were only four left by the time the jury was finally seated. And me, with my fierce devotion to civic responsibility, by luck of the draw I was never called at all. Thirty-six people were required to seat only fourteen, and I was never one of those at all. The judge finally started getting tough with people toward the end of the day, which is the only reason we didn't go through all forty. And I didn't leave that courtroom till somewhere past 3:30, which meant that probably the trial didn't actually start at all that day--and their seven-day trial probably got extended to eight.

Just as a last little touch--the folks back in the jury assembly room who do the paperwork accidentally typed the wrong dates on our certificates and had to do them over.