Jury
duty stalks me like an obsessed lover.
No sooner has the legal period between calls elapsed than they call me
again. It never fails. Some people are never called for jury
duty. I wish I knew what saint I must invoke
to get on THAT list. So far, nothing has
worked, including moving from one county to another. They found me at my new address, and I got
the summons. Different courts, same
routine.
I
am a Law and Order junkie. I watch old episodes of it, over and over. I know the plots. I know Lennie Briscoe’s life story. I can answer most of the trivia questions
that my cable company asks on commercial breaks. In the Law
and Order world, courtrooms are scenes of high drama. Attorneys shout “Objection!” at the slightest
provocation and insult the judges. They
do borderline illegal things to get evidence accepted. Nobody is bored, including the jury. It doesn’t get any better than that.
Real
jury duty is something else. If you
report in person, you are put in a big room with uncomfortable chairs, where
your attendance is noted and where you sit and wait … and wait … and wait. You’d better have a book, a Kindle, a
knitting project, an iPhone or something to keep you occupied, because chances
are you will spend a good part of the day bored half out of your brain and
wondering if this is what Purgatory is like.
If
you are chosen for a jury, don’t expect drama.
Most likely, you will end up having to listen to both sides of a lawsuit. If you end up on a criminal case, the
defendant will probably be someone who was caught with a bag of marijuana or
some other penny ante stuff.
So
far, I have only made it into a courtroom once.
I was Juror No. 7 in a civil case.
The only drama in that courtroom came from me, when my cell phone rang
in the middle of the proceedings. I
tried to pretend it wasn’t my phone, which was hard, because everyone was
staring at me. I pulled the offending gadget
out of my purse and tried to shut it off.
The phone continued to ring, even though I was frantically pressing the
off button. The judge, a middle-aged guy
with a voice that could be heard all the way to Pennsylvania, yelled at
me. It took some seconds, but I finally
managed to hang up.
The
phone rang AGAIN! My caller had
re-dialed when I hung up on him. Again, I
couldn’t shut the phone off. Again, the
judge barked at me. Finally, I succeeded
in quieting the ring and shutting the phone off completely. I would have crawled away to die, but stepping
over six other jurors to get out would have caused more unwelcome attention. I had to be content with sitting still and
trying to melt into the jury box.
 |
| Shut that phone off or I will have you killed! |
If
I ever did get on a jury in a Law and
Order type case, a few things would give me pause.
First,
all the male prosecuting attorneys on Law
and Order are handsome and sexy. I
have seen male lawyers, and even known a few of them. None of them looked like Michael Moriarty or
Sam Waterston. I have known a couple of
female lawyers, too, and they didn’t look like any of Jack McCoy’s
assistants. The presence of gorgeous,
hot prosecuting attorneys would throw a veil of unreality over any trial.
Judges
on Law and Order are always telling
juries to disregard something that a witness or one of the attorneys has said
or done. I don’t know about anyone else,
but if someone tells me to disregard something I just heard or saw, that thing
is going to stick in my mind and grow until it explodes. It’s like having someone tell you not to
think about shoes. You won’t be able to
NOT think about shoes and it will drive you nuts. This is not very good courtroom strategy,
unless one of the attorneys WANTS the jurors to compulsively think about
whatever they are supposed to disregard.
That’s sneaky, but effective.
If
I were on a Law and Order jury, I
wouldn’t flirt with the defendant. That
is not a recommended way to liven things up, and a guy who is being tried for a
multiple murder might not turn out to be an ideal boyfriend. The woman juror in that episode should have
figured that out before getting herself in trouble, but she chose to check her
brains at the courtroom door. Love is
blind.
So
here I am, watching and waiting for the next jury summons to arrive in the mail
– and it will.
