You have been summoned by the Superior Court of Los Angeles County.

Yeah, it is one of the most dreaded things for so many people. We often feel helpless, powerless, and sometimes enslaved. We are constantly reminded (more like forced to believe) that it is the civic duty of every United Sates citizen to serve as a juror. They conveniently fail to inform us that the 13th Amendment of the Constitution prohibits involuntary servitude. The real irony is that no one is respecting you or your Constitutional right, yet you are supposed to care for the rights of the litigants and make a fair decision for them? Yeah, right!!!

But anyway, I am sure that you already know all this. And I am sure that you have already found out that it is damn near impossible to be granted an excuse. It doesn't matter if you are unemployed, take care of kids, are a student or teacher, are financially burdened, or even physically disabled! They will fiendishly come up with a way for you to serve. You can, however; try your luck at some of the following:

1. Throw away your summons! Personally, I answer a few and throw away a few. If they ever call me up to explain why I did not respond to the summons, I will ask them to check my jury service record. I have responded and shown up in the past, after all, the post office does make mistakes and they cannot prove that I indeed received the notice.

2. Ask to be excused even if you think you don't have a chance. It's your right.

3. If you are not excused, then ask for a 3 month postponement. Heck, ask for two or three additional postponements; delay as much as you can!

If everything mentioned above failed, then there might still be some hope. You will have to go the court location on the day specified. There you will be given one last chance to explain why you should be excused. If your request is once again denied, then you will certainly find out just what kind of luck you have. There is no guarantee that you will indeed serve as a juror in a case; just the same, there is no guarantee that you will not serve. By California law, your duty will be completed if you are not chosen to serve in a case at the end of the first day. They might call you into a courtroom, ask you some questions, then deem you not suitable. They might not call you into a courtroom at all and you'll just spend the whole day in the waiting room. But don't bet on it.

This is what happened to me:

I received my dreaded Jury Summons about 3 months ago. I wanted to just throw it away, but that's what I did with my last one, so I decided not to try my luck this time and go ahead and register. Since you are required to register by phone before you can even request an excuse, I went ahead and did that. Then I talked to someone about getting excused since at the time I was seeking employment and could not afford to loose a job interview because of jury duty. Of course, they didn't give a damn and told me to mail in an excuse request. After doing so, I received a reply indicating that they had only granted a 3 month postponement. Yeah, no surprise there.

3 months later, the horrible week had arrived. You are first placed on "On-Call" status, which means that all potential jurors are instructed to call in the evening before to hear a message that instructs everyone on whether they need to report at the Court House on the following day or not. I called on Sunday: all clear. Monday, Tuesday: didn't have to go. Called on Wednesday: that's when they got me! I was told I had to show up on Thursday morning.

I was instructed to go to the Criminal Justice Building in Downtown L.A. Be careful if you ever go down there. There are many courthouses in that same area, so be sure you have the correct address. It would also be wise to keep an eye out for all those pestering one way streets; and if you are not on a one way street, be sure not to drive on the wrong side of the street (I actually saw a woman doing that). After I had parked in the free juror parking area a few blocks away, I made my way down the hills to the courthouse. It kind of made me wonder what kind of a moron would build City Hall in an area that was so full of hills... but any way, I really didn't know exactly where the court was at. I decided to follow the leader and trail behind two women who luckily also ended up going to the same building as I was. I felt like asking them if they were in the same situation as I was, but being the cool guy that I am, I just kept on trailing behind them pretending to know exactly were I was heading.

With some minor trouble, I found the jury room. One thing I should note is that some freaking genius decided to have 2 rooms with the exact same number on both the 5th and 11th floor! I guess some people were not paying attention as I was the only one who got off of the elevator on the 5th floor. A few minutes later, some of the people who were also in the elevator wondered back onto the 5th floor. Man, you'd think they would point that out in the summons! I sat outside with the rest of the jurors waiting for them to open the room. I began to notice how people were dressed. There were some with their nice suits and ties; then there were those dressed in blue jeans and a T-shirt, myself included. I see no reason to dress-up. Casual business attire is suggested; not mandated! After all, you don't want to show them that you are all happy and ready to serve, do you?

The doors to the room came open and we were all led in. After an introduction as to what we where to expect on that day, I saw nothing but dull, grim, angry faces. The only thing interesting there were the hard nipples on the blonde woman sitting next to me. But all joking aside, being there is bad enough, but those stupid little speeches they give to try to fill you with self pride are the final slap on the face. In a pathetic attempt to inspire us all, an actual judge began to tell us that jurors are actually held in an elevated status since they become an essential part of justice. Yeah, and slavery was also an essential part of the early colonists lives when they first came to this land; but he sure didn't mention that. You get paid nothing on the first day, then you receive $15 for each day served the day after and $0.35 per mile gas allowance one way. What the hell do they think, that we all ride mopeds to the court and then cary them back home on our backs?!!! Of course not; but they don't care. At least they gave us a quick break after the introduction that allowed us a chance to stretch our legs.

Let me give you all some advice: take something with you to do! Trust me, you will sit there and wait for maybe hours at a time. Take a book, magazine, lap top, or maybe even a hand held video game (you might want to call before hand to make sure it's o.k.). Don't make the mistake I made the first time I attended jury duty. I was called to the Downy Court House and just sat there for about 8hrs looking at the ceiling, looking at the walls, looking at other people, looking out the window, and looking for a way to keep from going out of my mind! This time I took a drawing that I had already started and worked on it throughout the day. It kept me occupied for most of the time and it sure helped make the day go by faster.

After the break, everyone once again came in and sat. Throughout the day, they call several groups of jurors who are taken to a courtroom in order to be interviewed and determined whether or not they can serve in a case. Well, we did not have to wait for very long before they started calling the names for the first round of potential jurors. I think everyone started to grind their teeth a bit in a surge of tension as they hoped not to be called. To my delight, my name was not called and I let out a silent sigh of relief as the groups made their way out the room. Sometimes I think I have the worst luck in the world. Everything always happens to me; that is, everything BAD happens to me. So when they started calling the names for the next group of jurors, I was positive that I would be chosen. One by one, they called out the names. "They're gonn'a get me... they're gonn'a get me this time," I started thinking to myself. I grabbed my pen and kept on casually working on my drawing as I had apparently been wrong. Yeah, I managed to dodge the bullet a second time. I wondered how much longer my luck would last as we all headed out the door for lunch about an hour later.

You may not believe it, but even though I have lived in Los Angeles for most of my life, I think this is the first time I have ever set foot in Down Town L.A. There are many interesting sights. The massively tall City Hall building makes such a picture quality contrast with the homeless lying down on the sidewalk begging for money. I made my way back up to my car (those hills and the stairs in the parking structure give you quite a workout) and had some animal crackers and a bottle of water for lunch. As I stood on the top floor of the parking structure, I gazed at all of the buildings. The City Hall building and the L.A. Times building were the only two that really stood out. It kind of made my wish that I had taken my camera. Not that the buildings stood out as a breathtakingly magnificent work of innovating architect, it's just that it was my first time there. I decided to stroll around on the streets for a while. Everything looked busy, but at the same time so, so boring. There was supposed to be a mall somewhere around that place, so I just wondered around aimlessly hoping that I would see it. I did see the L.A. Phil Harmonic with its somewhat futuristic design covered with reflective metal-like panels. I also came across a fountain that immediately looked very familiar. I had seen it in a picture one of my teachers gave me when I was a kid. She had taken one of drawings for an art exhibition there one time many years ago. I just kind of looked at the fountain and thought, "Wow, my artwork was displayed here one time." Yeah, I knew it was no big deal as I made my way back to the Court House... and no, I never did find that mall.

Having once again gone through the security check and up the elevator, I sat at a table in the jury waiting room and continued to work on my drawing, browsed a few magazines, and kept looking at my watch relentlessly. I noticed that the group had thinned out considerably. We only had a few more hours to go, but they might as well have been days considering how eager we all felt to break free from this invisible cage and fly home. Once again the dreaded speaker abruptly came on and round 3 began. The names began to be called one by one. I could just about hear that exact voice in my head calling my name. She just kept on calling name after name after name and it seemed that she would never stop. I counted 30 names called; luckily, mine not included. There were maybe 30 or 40 of us left. We were like fish in a quickly drying shallow puddle of water.

By now, I had already finished my drawing of a black and white coy fish tattoo. I was feeling very bored and desperately looking for an end to this painful day. Apparently, I had not been the only one to dodge the bullet so far. There was a guy, no wait, there was a really geeky looking dork sitting in the table in front of me who was chatting with woman sitting next to him. She seemed so very surprised that he had not been called so far. She talked about how she had been called earlier that day and questioned by the lawyers of a case and had been rejected for an unknown reason. She didn't seem to mind that too much. At that time, an Asian man walked into the room and started talking with the women at the front desk. He had also been seemingly rejected as a juror in a case and kept saying, "I don't speak english. I don't speak english." The problem was that he spoke that phrase perfectly! Yeah, I knew his trick; pretending not to speak english would get him kicked out of the jury panel every single time. "Yeah, really good trick, " I thought as I continued to stare at my watch obsessively.

There was only about 30 minutes to go when round 4 began. Just like a terrible dream, this bogus journey was about to take a bad plunge. We were informed that the following case was expected to last at least one month and actual jury selection was to take place on Tuesday of the following week. So who ever got called would have to come back and face the music at a later date. I and the guy sitting in front of me just kind of looked at each other briefly and mumbled, "Oh hell no!" A day was bad enough, but a month? Torture. To tell you the truth, I felt like running into the bathroom. I thought, "I'll just tell them that I was in the bathroom and didn't hear my name called." Of course, I didn't and just looked down at the table as we were picked off like birds on a wire. They got the woman sitting behind me, two women sitting to the side of me, and the guy sitting in front of me. What really scared me is that I had actually dreamed the night before that I had been forced to return to for a second day. This damned dream seemed to be coming true and I almost stood up and accepted my fate before my name was even called. But was my name indeed called? NO!!! Remarkably, I was one of the few left in the room and remained on the last stretch of this never-ending road.

A few minutes later after hearing the now hated speaker come on again, a rolling gasp of relief gently echoed through the room as I and the rest of the jury duty survivors were informed that we had triumphantly made it though the day and our service was complete. For the first time that day, I was eager to here my name called as they took roll call one last time to make sure no one had sneaked out. "Here!" I screamed as my name was called and busted out of there like a raging river through a crumbled dam. With my proof of jury duty slip in my hand and jubilee in my mind, I quickly headed out to my car and painstakingly inched my way out of the busy parking structure. Free at last. To put it bluntly, jury duty sucks! It sucked last time and it sucked this time too. But hey, at least it gave me something to write about and maybe this can give someone a few ideas on how to avoid it!