what i learned at jury duty
What I learned —
At Jury Duty
1] Wearing a T-shirt that says “Guilty!” does not get you off jury duty. It just means you have to come back tomorrow at the same time.
2] Early morning lines to enter Los Angeles court buildings are longer than any line should be unless it is the return of Elvis.
3] It is fun to amuse yourself with mental games and tricks in court house entry lines, like, “Which guy would murder my family faster at Thanksgiving dinner, the guy standing in front of me or the guy standing behind me.”
4] Flip flops are “business casual” with the court visiting crowd.
5] If you wear a day glow Patagonia rain slicker to jury duty, every guard will remember you. [This might not be a good thing.]
6] Jury duty comes with a one week free bus pass. [This has got to really burn people who only get twenty-three cents per mile, I am pretty sure the bus fare is better.]
7] If you need to know whether you need to get up for jury duty at 6 am? The website and phone system will tell you to call back at 4 am to find out.
8] Judges are very strict about what you can and cannot say about jury duty. Their orders do not however say you cannot mention the length of the line outside the court house building at 8 am.
9] Elevators in Los Angeles court buildings do not have built in “stop if you hit something solid like a person” directives.
[*All this time I have been making fun of movies that do not show elevator doors opening when someone sticks an arm in a closing door –– now I have seen elevator doors aggressively try to mash people despite people using their whole body mass as a block to hold that door open — who knew that really existed?]
10] Jury rooms have free internet. And no one gets to come in but other jury people and a nice judge who says thanks for being there. Not even your mom! [This is totally free porn if you live at Mom’s, Dude.]
*by the way while i am making some fun here i have never seen so many nice calm happy unperturbable people before in my life, from the guards to the bailiffs to the clerks to the judges to court reporters, i am a little worried these people do not know how pissed off and perturbed they should actually be….
where the art work comes from :
that is from cam b
0 Responses to what i learned at jury duty
After watching conservative jurors make some basic assumptions that more liberal jurors wouldn’t make, I vowed to always try to get jury duty—so of course, I have yet to even be called since I made the vow.
Your experience sounds far superior to mine in Chicago. The other potential jurors were, to put it mildly, frightening.
I was convinced notices weren’t actually mailed to anyone, but that the folks in charge just roamed around the streets of Chicago and handed out summons to homeless folks.
Why should they be pissed off, when they’re making a union wage plus bennies for being inside and moving the crowd along like the wandering Hebrews from “The Ten Commandments.”
Where is the courtroom, Max, Downtown L.A.? I can’t stand my local courthouse, nor any of the office buildings around it.
Well it is Downtown, but everyone refers to another court as THE Downtown court. The first time someone said that was pretty funny to me. “At the Downtown court house….” And I was thinking, Erm? We are downtown already are we not?”
I would think herding that many people clearly unfamiliar with the situation around who ask the same questions and make the same mistakes over and over would get pretty old but everyone seemed pretty chipper.