So the jury thing is over, the rest of the jury more or less agreed with me, and I don’t have to walk to Civic Center early in the morning anymore. And just to make life that much more pleasant, it’s raining out. This whole late spring series of storms has me all squishy-happy…
Anyway, some notes on jury duty:
I arrived at 10:15 on Wednesday and immediately spotted Larry-bob and a nice guy named Smurf, about whom I can tell you little more except that he’s a DJ and an obscure music buff, which I find to be admirable qualities…
We watched the orientation video, which told us how beautiful California is and how wonderful and emotional we’d find jury service. “Many jurors even keep in touch after the trial is over,” it stated proudly. Funny, I’d never thought of jury duty as the cool new way to make social contacts…
I was called upstairs for jury selection pretty quickly. Mercifully, it was to be a very short trial, only two or three days. I was on my best behavior lest I be excused and assigned to a nastier one. It took a couple of hours to get twelve jurors and one alternate seated. Fortunately, the flakes and other people with whom I dreaded serving were all eliminated…
The first two to go were the two who apparently couldn’t understand a single question asked of them and needed every one repeated. One seemed hard of hearing and the other evidently had, at best, a tenuous grasp on the English language. I sort of wondered why neither one had checked his respective little box on the questionnaire, which would have saved him (and the rest of us) considerable time. Another guy was eliminated because — although he seemed like a very nice guy — he just wasn’t terribly bright…
And then there was the “issues” guy. You know the type, especially if you live in the Bay Area. He was the quintessential San Francisco granola neurotic, the sort of individual who has to spend fifteen minutes pondering the metaphysical implications of such probing questions as “what is your name?” and “what is your spouse’s occupation?”. This guy was a pure 100% flake, a basket case, and he went on and on about his wife’s illness, his job difficulties, and a litany of other issues which had nothing to do with the (very simple and straightforward) questions being asked. Note that this was very obviously NOT a performance to get him excused from service. The thought of watching this guy try to make a decision about a case (or even of being in a closed room with him for a couple of hours) horrified me. Fortunately, I was spared the nightmare…
The trial was uneventful, if odd, and it centered around a semi-violent 1998 encounter between a postal worker and one of her customers. I didn’t find either account particularly believable, and (as it happened) neither did my fellow jurors. Since the burdern of proof was on the plaintiff, we found for the defendant. That’s a bit of an oversimplification, but you get the picture…
I was rather impressed to see that most of my fellow jurors were more or less rational and reasonable individuals. I’d really feared being part of a San Francisco jury, assuming that the native silliness so common in this area would surface, but it never really did. We went about our business and handled things quickly and efficiently (but also with sufficient attention to detail)…
All in all, it really wasn’t bad, although I’m not itching to do it again anytime soon nor to have cocktails and quality time with my former colleagues…