It naturally worked out to be an appropriate pain. My jury duty started February 19, the Tuesday after the President's Day weekend. I didn't do anything much save dent a couch cushion during those days, so jury duty would be a fourth day (and possibly fifth and sixth and so on) of more sitting around. My work was also a problem. I write for a bimonthly trade magazine, so that means a deadline every two months. That deadline was fast approaching just as I was getting the summons.
The courthouse was just a few blocks away from my apartment, one of those big old stone buildings every city accidentally still has a couple of. It actually has a lawn around it, something most houses in Jersey City don't have. It's like a little bit of Washington D.C., although the bail bondsmen and empty storefronts across the street makes it look like, well, other parts of Washington D.C. I walked there in five minutes: my quickest commute since Dad paid me to paint the hallway one summer vacation.
I went through big brass doors, showed my jury slip to a guard, and promptly got kicked out. The jury met in the building next door. The building next door was constructed seemingly to make the courthouse look better. It was an ugly block of scratched green windows, with no shade of green being represented for more than five window panels. Jumbles of concrete not even skaters would want to hang out by jutted out. It was ten stories of closed curtains and ass ends of air conditioners. It matched the rest of Jersey City perfectly.
Courthouses have metal detectors, and since September 11 they've actually been plugged in. I left my Swiss Army Knife at home, knowing that it would set off the detector; I'd make do without my toothpick. I didn't have a choice with my keys, so I also left my change in my pocket. I'd have to dig them out every day, but hopefully I'd then stroll through the detector without a beep and go on my way. I didn't anticipate my belt buckle going off, so I had to get the once over with the magic wand. I don't have belts without a metal buckle, so this would be my routine.
The jury room was on the fourth floor. There were over a hundred people inside. It was a true cross section of Hudson County. Whenever I see a big mass of people at a mall or a subway, I wonder if it's a true cross section of the area, or if it's skewed by being nothing but commuters or Old Navy shoppers. This was a fully random mix of people. (Not counting children, people who got out of it or skipped, those physically unable to serve, and people without driver's licenses, a voting record or any tax returns.) A lot of Asians, a lot of Latinos, a good number of blacks and whites. The random sampling of Jersey City looked like a random sampling of the Earth, assuming everyone on Earth is bored.
For about an hour we were given lectures on how great we were for participating in our civil duty. The $500 fine for skipping jury duty was not brought up. Most of us were here for our first times. A lot of us could have gotten out of it, but we chose to go. I suspect jury attendance has shot up since September 11. The requirements for jury duty were gone over: you have to be a citizen, reside in Hudson County, and read English. Not speak or understand it, just read it. If these rules hold in other countries, I'll be on French juries even though I don't know how to ask where the bathroom is.
Hudson County is the only county in New Jersey that does not provide parking for jurors. Sucks to be us. Street parking is mostly metered, and people on a trial aren't allowed to run out every two hours. They recommended taking public transportation to get there. Finding parking on my street is a nightmare, and I'm five blocks from anything of interest. Once again I did a mental jig that my apartment came with a parking space.
We were to wait in the room until we were called for possible trials. The room was designed for entertaining people for a long time. Two sections of benches had comfortable vinyl cushions across them. Books and board games were on shelves. TVs were pointed at the pews, and a selection of generally inoffensive movies was on tape (hopefully not including Pauly Shore's Jury Duty). Coffee was free. Computers were set up for word processing and playing games. It was kindergarten for grownups.
The room was split into a quiet and a loud section: the loud section was where the TV was turned on to watch movies. When I initially sat down, I inadvertently picked the quiet section. Someone picked a movie. I hadn't heard of it, but Cindy Williams and Markie Post were in it. I stayed in the quiet section. There were books for unprepared jurors to read, which the official jury duty woman said were OK to take home if we weren't finished, since they get plenty of donated books. I jumped at the opportunity, until I remembered I already brought a book, I've got a hundred unread books at home taking up space, and a hundred read ones taking up a similar space. Anything I'd find of interest in their piles would be available for free at the library, and wouldn't clutter up my dinky place any more.
My wait was only an hour or so. My name got culled for the third group of jurors. About twenty of us got marched out of the pew room and across to the decent looking building. We had to go through another round of metal detectors to get in the courthouse. The belt buckle went off again. Next time I buy a lawyer a present, it'll be a ceramic belt buckle. Our court was up on the fourth floor. The whole inside of the building was beautiful. Murals done in 1911 depicted four 'brave' events in U.S. history: George Washington watching Fort Lee get taken by the British, us 'buying' the land from native Americans unclear on the concept of land ownership, us watching someone pilot a steamship up the Hudson, and us killing the Dutch. It made me so proud to be an American, I let my apartment get looted by English guys, and commissioned a painting of it.
The courtroom was just like in movies: lots of wood paneling, high ceilings, a regal feeling around the whole place. The judge's bench was just a few inches off the ground, not the twelve feet that's normally on TV, but aside from that, Ally McBeal's set designers got it right.
Two plaintiffs were on the right, with a middle-aged lawyer. On the left was the defendant in a scruffy flannel shirt, with a sharp looking young guy in a shiny suit. If that wasn't a trial lawyer, I'd kill a Dutchman. The judge explained the basic rules of jury duty, emphasizing how undramatic the next few days will be for us lucky few. This was a civil case, so there'd only be eight of us on the jury. Jury selection would start right after lunch.
I live close, but I almost never go out to eat, so I hadn't been to the local restaurants. It was a U.N. smorgasbord. A Filipino restaurant, a Pakistani buffet, a Cuban sandwich shop, a Polish diner, a newly opened pizza place. There was also a McDonalds with a truly atrocious mural on the side that said MCDONALDS LOVES JERSEY CITY, with a Grimace picture that made him look like an infected McNugget. I hit the Pakistani buffet first, and figured I'd work my way up to the mutant Grimace once I exhausted all the restaurants that pull in under a billion dollars a year.
Back at the courthouse, we finally found out what this case was about. We'd get details during opening statements, but this would be a personal injury case. There was a car accident in 1998 that the defendant was at fault at. The car damages were settled, so this was solely about injuries. The plaintiff didn't seem to be injured to me, but she had been healing since 1998. She had flown in from Florida, where she now lived, for this case. The judge said she'd estimate the case to take about a week.
Every prospective juror had a quick list of things to announce: place of birth, citizenship, if and how often they drive. one by one the prospective jurors (I wasn't one of the first eight) answered. People were born in two places mainly: Jersey City and Cuba. People either are stuck here their whole life, or escape a dictatorship and find this a tiny bit better by comparison. One of the specific questions asked was if you or anyone you knew were in or witnessed an automobile accident. Ever. How could anyone not? In the past year, I've been involved in a collision that totaled my car, seen two or three little fender benders occur, driven past a bunch of tangled wreckage, had a friend's mother die in a car accident, had a cousin die in an accident, had a friend drive into another friend's car, had a friend in a drunk driving accident just last week, and seen more than my share of World's Wildest Police Videos. And this is unfortunately a normal year.
Everyone had some car accident experience, so the judge asked about it, and then if they'd be able to objectively weigh a case like this. The judge dismissed obviously biased people: several people were involved in rather grisly accidents, someone else had a personal injury case pending in another court. One woman adopted a child a few years ago, with this judge presiding in the case. Another woman said she distrusted all personal injury cases, and thought they were all crooked (she added "No Offense" to the current plaintiff). The plaintiff and defendant's lawyers also dismissed a few people, based on criteria I couldn't figure out. As soon as an eighth person was interviewed, a lawyer would throw that person or someone else off. They were going through every juror. I was third to last to be called. I sat down in the jury box and answered the regular list of questions. For car accident experience, I mentioned my collision last year. If I mentioned everything, I'd still be sitting there. I said I could be an unbiased judge, and neither lawyer shot me down. I was on the jury, apparently.
So long as I was getting on a trial, it might as well be a week long one. The fee for jurors was that famous five dollars a day (which didn't even cover lunch) but starting on the third day, it was upped to forty bucks a day. Hey, that was almost minimum wage!
The last two jurors were brought to the jury box, and rather quickly dismissed. Uh oh, out of jurors. This didn't seem like an uncommon occurrence to the people regularly in the room. The judge said the eighth juror would be picked tomorrow from a different sampling, and sent us all home until then. We didn't have to come in until 10:00 A.M., so we wouldn't waste time waiting for this eighth juror to be picked.
I called into work, and said I was on a trial that might stretch to next week. There was no court on Fridays, so I could come in then. And I would come in Wednesday after the trial, since I had work that was holding up everyone else in the magazine. Driving to work at 6:00 P.M. to work on a day I'd officially have off. Yeah, I was loving jury duty.
I conceivably didn't have to leave the house until 9:55, so I had ample opportunity to sleep in Wednesday. And I did. Even when I woke up, I hung out in bed and read until 9:40. I was going to read until 9:30, but it was a dialogue-heavy issue of Batman, so it took longer than expected. I didn't get out of the house until 9:50, and so ran to the courthouse with wet hair. I was sure everyone but me was already there, the judge hiding behind the doorframe ready to whack me with her gavel for holding up the judicial system.
I dumped my keys and change in the bin and ran through the metal detector. I beeped. Damn it, I was wearing different pants but the same beep-inspiring belt. I said it was probably the belt. The wand went up and down me, beeping at the belt and also my left pocket. I had gum in there.
"What's in the pocket, a knife?"
"No, just gum," I said, a bit mystified. I went to pull it out.
"Leave it in, just tell me what is it!" the guard yelled.
"It's just gum."
"Leave it in! You can go." Someone earlier in the morning had a knife in their pocket. Procedure for knives apparently was to let the person walk away with the knife, so long as he doesn't scare the guards by reaching for gum. If he's polite, he can tell the guards on the way out where he stabbed his victim, so they can send a janitor to mop up the blood.
I ran up the stairs: it was 10:02. I burst into the jury room, and there was only half the jury. "The court's completely empty. No one's in there," one of the jurors said. We did what we did all of yesterday: waited. The rest of our seven got there within ten minutes. The room was designed for a civil trial jury: the table sat exactly eight people. The chairs in the jury room were comfortable, padded with backrests that curved to armrests. Say this about jury duty: it's boring, but it's not butt numbing.
We sat there until 10:45, when the clerk brought us inside the courtroom. The fresh picked eighth juror was sitting in the jury box. The two lawyers had big stacks of documents that sure looked like exhibits A through something further down the alphabet. A model of a human backbone was behind the plaintiff's lawyer. This was probably a whiplash case. The only thing missing from yesterday was the plaintiff.
The judge asked if both sides were ready for trial. The plaintiff's lawyer said no: the plaintiff wasn't present. The judge then threw the case out. I have no idea why the plaintiff was a no show. She came all the way from Florida, and then didn't show for opening statements. Hopefully she wasn't in another car accident.
We had to check back in with the jury room, so it was another round of waiting at the metal detector. This time my belt buckle, gum, and the metal clip from my JUROR nametag (which ironically did not have my name) got beeped, and the guard seemed annoyed that he had to wave the wand around me instead of me running off unchecked. Life is getting back to normal after September 11.
Our jury service was done, so we got sent off. I walked home and got ready to call work. It was 11:30. I wouldn't have to do a late Wednesday at work: I could leave now and get four or five hours in. Then, I realized my position. Work believed I was on a probable week-long trial. Who was going to stop by the courthouse to make sure that trial was still in session? I could take the rest of the day off. Hell, I could fake this trial and take weeks off of work!
I didn't, of course. Slacking off would just cause the other people at work to have to work harder. Any time in the next six weeks would have been a much better time for this scheme. Some days you wish you were George Costanza, and could turn the conscious off when opportunity presented itself. I threw hot dogs in the microwave for lunch (sorry Polish diner), and did my morning commute a few hours late. Traffic at noon is just as bad as traffic at 8:30.
There's a whole host of things that can be blessings or curses, depending on your outlook. Business travel, new neighbors, any change in your routine: basically anything between hitting the lottery and contracting a disease is open to interpretation. Jury duty's squarely in there, and I went in thinking positive. A day and a half later, I went out yawning. I was hoping for 12 Angry Men, and I got Waiting for Godot.