Yes, I have been selected to serve on a jury. Of course, I can't say much about that except that I won't be blogging during daytime hours for the next few days. God help me if it lasts much longer than that. It's civil, not criminal so I'm cautiously optimistic. Next time I get called though, I'm wearing a black tee shirt with a big anarchy symbol on the front of it (though I love Gordon's approach--see the comments in the post below).
A few notable things. First, the Burbank court house not only doesn't have a cafeteria, it doesn't even have a vending machine that dispenses coffee. Given that we all had to assemble at 8:00 a.m., it was a bit like the land of the lotus eaters in the waiting room. The woman who led us through the orientation came off like the judicial equivalent of Nurse Ratchet (sp?). We watched two videos about being a juror (this is how you know the courthouse is in Burbank) both of which had people saying how unique and great America is because we get to be tried by a jury of our peers. Sigh. After the whole introductory rigmarole, Nurse R. softens up. She looks at us with big sad clown eyes and tells us about the comment/suggestion box. "If for example," she says in a desperate and beseeching kind of way, "If you want to suggest the Burbank courthouse get a coffee stand, you could fill out one of these cards." Poor woman. She's not a bitch; she's just under caffeinated.
So then we're sitting getting questioned by the judge who wants to determine what kinds of jobs and employers we've had and all of our family members have had. It was marginally interesting. It really is true that California has a disproportionate number of rocket scientists. I can't tell you how many Rocketdyne employee, semiconductor work-type answers there were. They come to this one guy, and the judge asks him what kind of work his oldest son does. "He's a bum," the guy says. "Hmm," the judge says, "And before he was a bum, what did he do?" "Before that he was in jail," the guy says. "And is he married?" the judge asks. "Hell no," the guy answers, "You think anyone would have that bum?" It's always good to have a comic moment, I say.
On a more depressing note, on the train on the way there, I sat across from this woman who, coincidentally, was talking about serving on a jury (I had not spoken a word). She's telling the woman next to her how horrible it was, how they brought in the defendant in all of these chains and manacles. When the jury went to deliberate, they took a vote at first, and ten of them said he was not guilty and two said guilty, she being one of the latter two. She says one of the other ten asked who thought he was guilty. "I told them I did," she says, "'Why would they have him in all of those chains if he was innocent??'" She raises her eyebrows and shrugs at her seat partner, as if to say "duh." Then she explains that the woman gave her the third degree. "So I just said fine he's not guilty. I don't need to be put through that."
Can you blame me for not having a faux seizure or breaking out into hysterical cackling or in some other way disqualifying myself? The woman's story was just wrong on every level. Sigh.
So I have no ghost-blogger to take the keyboard in case of a sudden civic duty. I'll be posting at night some, but of course, I have to actually work at night since I can't really just not do anything job-wise for a week, so it'll be intermittent. Don't forget about me.
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