Jury Duty

When I was in Law School I was called for jury duty. In those days the court summoned people by picking their names out of a bin and you could get out of jury duty by doing things like, for example, being in law school. I got out of it so I wouldn’t miss any classes (yes, I know, but I try not to be like that any more). I’d hoped for another chance ever since but the new, sophisticated, fully random and non-discriminatory jury computer didn’t want me. Until recently.

The summons doesn’t exactly specify the date on which you are to appear. It does exactly specify the date you have to wait until 4:00 the day before to call a recorded message to find out if that’s the right date. (When you call, the first and therefore presumably the most important thing on the recorded message is a long list of items of clothing that aren’t allowed in Court. Some of them I’d never heard of but didn’t worry too much about since I didn’t think that I had any “skorts,” for example, in my wardrobe. I decided to wear a necktie, so that wouldn’t be picked to serve on a criminal jury, and a sweater since courtrooms are always cool enough for people wearing robes and suits.)

I was originally supposed to appear on a Friday in early February and I scheduled the week accordingly. On Thursday the recording rescheduled me to a date in mid-February -- when, naturally, I was scheduled to be out of town. I re-read the summons, found a number to call to reach a live person, and explained my predicament to a lady who rescheduled me for a Monday later in the month. I was grateful, though puzzled about why jurors would be called on a Monday. Then I remembered about City Court. That’s the punishment, I figured, for trying to reschedule your jury duty. But another recorded message later rescheduled me yet again, this time to a Tuesday.

The summons told me to be at the jury assembly room at 7:30. I arrived at 7:10, thinking to beat the crowd. It turned out that approximately 11,423 people had been called for jury duty that day, roughly 60% of whom came early thinking to beat the crowd. On this particular Tuesday eighteen trials were scheduled, including three murder cases. You’ve seen the second floor on Tuesday mornings before, you say? I guarantee that you’ve never, ever seen anything like this. Imagine Times’ Square on New Years Eve; imagine El Corral on Saturday night; I’m telling you, you just can’t imagine. A tiny appendix of the crowd filled the jury assembly room; the rest stuffed the hallways.

In the room there were two lines: a line on the left for those whose last names began with the letters A-L, and a line on the right for last names M-Z. A hardy few of the jury commissioner’s staff ventured into the hallways to announce this since most of us couldn’t get within a quarter mile of the assembly room. Unfortunately, it developed that the new, sophisticated, fully-random and non-discriminatory jury computers had summoned 47 M-Z people and 11,376 A-L people. The A-L line led from the assembly room desk, along the right wall of the assembly room, and out the door, looped three times up and down the length of the north hallway, and then ran down the stairs to the first floor. The M-Z line was ten feet long. After a while staff members began to come out every few minutes to ask people in the A-L line whether their names didn’t really begin M-Z. They were just asking the people who had arrived late, you say? Nope; the people who came late were a block or two away, at the other end of the line.

Once into the assembly room we started learning things. The first thing we learned was that we weren’t going to be sitting down for a while, since every chair in the room had someone on it (including, no doubt, all of those M-Zs, whose wait in line was about 5 minutes). The next thing we learned is the reason we were standing in line: we had to fill out a form. We were to fill out a questionnaire “based on the questionnaire you filled out and returned to the Court when you received your jury summons.” I never did find out why they couldn’t send out the real questionnaire to begin with, thus saving me 2½ hours in line.

The Court wanted us to learn a number of other things because at one point one of the ladies started playing a videotape on a large TV in front of the room. The tape started with what looked from a distance to be the Great Seal of the United States and the Comic Moments in History plaques on the wall behind the courthouse information desk. Then the distinguished Presiding Judge said something and the distinguished Judge of Division One said something (there may have been others but for various reasons I only remember those two). What they said nobody had any idea since there was no possibility of hearing the tape over the din. From the looks of things, though, the jury commissioner’s “How to be a Juror” tape is much classier than the Probate Division’s “How to be a Guardian or Conservator” tape, and differs also in having been made in this decade.

After filling out the form, those of us who couldn’t fit into the assembly room (i.e., most of us) went back out into the hallways to wait. At about 9:30 the bailiffs begin coming down to get their juries. One of the ladies reads off at random as many names as the bailiff asks for. While doing this she lights two flashing green lamps outside the assembly room, presumably to signal people loitering in the hallway to come in and pay attention. We paid attention but couldn’t come in, since we were loitering in the hallway like sardines loiter in the can.

I was eventually called for duty in Division 5. Those of us who had been chosen were pleased. I was pleased because it was a civil case; they were pleased because they would finally have a chance to sit down.

The case was perfect for me. It was a type of case I’ve done before and involved a subject I know about. I’ve known the plaintiff’s attorney since I started practicing; I’ve known the judge since I was a kid; I’ve known the defendant’s attorney since he was a kid. The clerk called 17 names for the panel; I was number sixteen.

The judge made the usual sort of speech and asked the panel the usual sorts of questions. The panel proved to have a police captain and a lawyer (me) on it, a postman and an auto mechanic, the normal quota of widows and Green Valley retirees, and a young unemployed man who was, he said, “too busy to read much.”

(Winnie was one of the widow ladies on the panel. She spent her breaks telling all who would listen that she has a lovely time each year at the Tucson High School Reunion; even though she dropped out during her freshman year in 1940, so much of the class has died off that she is now invited every year. Her sentences trailing off at the end, she complained that she, too, was getting pretty old; she couldn’t hear very well and had trouble remembering things. She didn’t actually seem to remember much past 1940. She called herself “Winnie the Pooped.”)

We got a “mini opening statement” under the new rules. That’s just what the judge called it-- a “mini opening statement”— though nobody on the panel except me understood what that meant. The lawyers did a good job. I thought the case long on damages, short on liability. I was half right.

Voir dire went well. I admitted that I knew just about everybody in the courtroom and on the witness list. The judge exempted me from the questions about legal knowledge and involvement in lawsuits, so I didn’t have to tell about the time I bumped a car from behind at five mph and got sued because one of the ladies in it was pregnant (I didn’t know you could do it that way — and she didn’t complain at the time — but my company settled the case.) The questions I did have to answer demonstrated that I would be a thoroughly impartial and exceptionally well-qualified juror. The plaintiff’s counsel, as an experienced and respected fellow member of The 100, would have perfect confidence in me despite my background as an insurance lawyer.

I was his first strike.

(He explained a few weeks later, when I ran into him at a bar. After the jury panel left the room my old friend the Judge had expressed confidence in my honesty and impartiality. My old friend the Plaintiffs’ attorney replied “I agree completely. And he’s my first strike.” While he trusted my honesty and impartiality, he was concerned that I might not be sufficiently sympathetic and generous to his client. I understood that and thought that maybe he was right. Then he told me the size of the jury’s verdict. He was definitely right.)

And so I simply sat while, after lunch, the postman, mechanic, et al. (including — you guessed it — Winnie) were called up to the box as the trial jurors. Neither the cop nor the lawyer were selected. On the other hand, neither was the young man who couldn't read.

(Truthful Aside: No, I didn’t expect to sit on that jury. Once in a while we all do things like leaving doctors, lawyers, etc. on the jury. Sometimes it turns out great and we feel particularly clever. More often we wind up wishing there had been more Winnies on the panel.)

After being rejected as jurors, the remainder of the panel wandered back down to the jury assembly room and sat down. None of us had had a chance to sit down that morning so we ran for the chairs. After a while, all at about the same time, we saw a sign on the desk: “Returning jurors go to room 234 for instructions.” As reluctant as we were to leave those precious chairs, we dutifully followed orders and went to room 234 (in the jury commissioner’s suite). We found a pleasant and efficient young lady there pleasantly and efficiently reading the newspaper. It wasn’t immediately clear why she couldn't have done so in the jury assembly room rather than leave a little sign on the desk that nobody can really see but, on the other hand, if we had had to deal with a large crowd of ourselves all morning we would have wanted to hide in our office, too. Having found her there we — well, mostly the police captain — convinced her that since it was almost two o’clock our day of jury duty was over and we could go home.

Sorry to disappoint those of you who were expecting a big finish. That’s it. I wish it had been more exciting, too.