Jury Duty

No, this post is not about the Pauly Shore movie. It is about the great civic duty I performed today: sitting in a room downtown bored out of my skull. In other words, jury duty.

Some of you may be suprised to learn that I have managed to avoid this task for the past 10 years by constantly living in different states than where my driver's license was issued. On a side note, I also didn't vote until the last election and my vote actually wound up meaning less than if I had voted any other state in the country (not that I live in a state). For whatever reason, my luck ran out this year, when I finally was physically able to go to jury duty for the first time.

I arrived at the court house promptly at 8 am. We had to sign in and get our little Juror badges with our Juror number on it. Once that happened, I went in the appropriate waiting room and waited. At about 9 am, they showed an informational video hosted by local news anchor Renee Poussant and the Chief Judge of the Court. I couldn't help but think that if I were actually on trial (or suing someone) I would not want the jury of my peers to be people who, like me, were half asleep and not really paying attention to this video, which possibly could have been their only real instructions on how to be a juror. The highlight of the video was when they told us that the guy in the robe is the judge. What? No Randy, Paula, and Simon?

After the video, a woman told us that there were two juries that needed to be selected soon and that she'd be back to do that. She also asked if we wanted the tvs in the room on or off. Someone said on. After informing everyone that the tvs only could show the channel they had on, "not HBO or Showtime." She went into the back room and turned them on to PBS. Luckily, I had brought a book. I knew I'd be in for the long haul. What I didn't expect was that the PBS show that they had (I think it was a DVD) was Ken Burns' Baseball. So I had that going for me, which was nice.

I watched Baseball for about an hour when I wanted to go get a drink. We were allowed to go to the snack machines to get food or take a 10 minute break (which, we were informed, was not enough time to go home and come back) to go to the cafeteria. I went with the first option. The sodas were a rip off at $1.50 for a 20 ouncer, but I didn't really feel like going without, so I got a Diet Dr. Pepper because they didn't have Diet Coke (apparently the DC Court system is a Pepsi company).

While I was in the snack machine area, I witnessed something that makes me believe that god (if there is one) has just as sick a sense of humor as I do. A priest got ripped off by the Pepsi machine. Yes, there was a priest reporting for jury duty and we happened to want sodas at the same time. He put his money in the Pepsi machine and pressed whatever soda he wanted. Only then did the machine say that it was out of that product. The priest turns to me and says, "I guess they take your money and then tell you what they don't have." I muttered something and got out of there before he could spot how amused I was at his predicament.

I went back into the waiting room and watched a little more Baseball and read my book. Soon, the woman came back to read off the first list of potential jurors. For those of you not familiar with the voire dire process, they take a bigger pool of people than they actually need and the lawyers choose 12 jurors (and 4 alternates) from that list based on their answers to questions. We were also told that if we are not picked, we should not take it personally. Hilarious. Anyway, she read the first list of names and I was not on it. More waiting.

A little while later, a man came in and repeated the process. The only difference is that this guy was a classic loud-talker. He didn't even need the microphone. I was not on his list either. He actually said that he called 55 people. Was I not even going to get called today? It is the Year of the Man. I couldn't be sure, but I was feeling good about things.

At 10 am, a second group of potential jurors reported to sign-in. Why couldn't I be in the late shift? By about 11, they were all ready and they replayed the informational video. By this time the room was packed and they announced that anyone who had been there since 8 could go out and take a 10 minute break. I decided that I didn't need to see the video again, so I went outside for 10 minutes.

When I came back, my seat had been taken (just when the phlegmy guy next to me whose nose whistled when he breathed had been called for a jury). I sat down in one of the few seats in the snack machine room and did a Sudoku and crossword puzzle. I was really bored. After counting down the minutes until lunch, they let us break at 12:15. Sweet. Freedom! If only for 1 hour.

Since I needed to get away from that building for lunch, I decided against the cafeteria (even if there was a possibility of getting one of those crappy cafeteria style hamburgers. The Verizon (nee MCI) Center is really close to the courthouse, so I walked the few blocks over there and settled on California Tortilla. I don't really like California Tortilla, but it was the only place that wasn't packed to the gills.

When I was walking back to the courthouse, I witnessed the second funniest thing I saw all day. There was a fire truck pulled up to the side of the street and two other official-looking trucks with it. There were also about 10 cops standing around on the sidewalk next to the area. As far as I could tell, there was no fire in the area, so I walked right by the crowd. What I saw was classic. The fire truck had tried to pull over and misjudged the amount of space between it and a parked car. There was a brand new (with the window sticker still in it) white Escalade with its front bumper ripped halfway off, connected to the business end of the fire truck. I can only imagine what the owner of this truck must have thought when he arrived on the scene. As much as I would have love to stay for those fireworks, I had to get back.

Back in the waiting room, I got a different seat. More waiting. More Baseball (they restarted it) and more book. When the woman came back in to announce another list of people, I almost wanted to be picked out of sheer boredom. While she was reading the list, two people's cell phones went off. The woman made some crack about it and went on with her recitation. Then, after she was finished (not picked again!), a woman behind me got a cell phone call and from what I could understand from her half of the conversation was that her kid had hit his teacher. Only in DC, folks. Only in DC.

Finally, at about 2:15, they announced over the loudspeaker that all potential jurors needed to come to the waiting room for an announcement. They told us we could finally leave. So I went to the Jury ATM machine and collected my $4 transportation pay and eventually got out of there. Having accomplished my civic duty of wating in a room all day, I cannot get called for another two years.

So what did I learn today?
1) god hates priests
2) bring your own soda/video ipod/book/PSP to jury duty
3) Satchel Paige won approximately 3000 games. Josh Gibson hit approximately 900 home runs
4) Fire Truck beats Escalade
5) America should probably think twice about this whole "jury of your peers" thing.