jury duty, day 1

Today was my first day of real, live jury duty. I've already been summoned twice before but this was the first time I had to show up. I actually went through voir dire today, which was incredibly interesting for a number of reasons, but they're still going through the selection so I have to go tomorrow too.

The day started off as I expected it to. Being me, and being afraid of traffic, I ended up getting there half an hour early, which means I spent half an hour sitting outside of Room 113 in the aptly-named Hall of Justice. Immediately after checking in, all the really ambitious/experienced people (people with actual work to do) in suits made a mad dash for the cubicles and tables with their bulky laptops and Blackberrys. The rest of us, i.e. the unemployed/housewife/senior citizen group, basically just grabbed chairs and started reading. They made us all watch this horribly cheesy video about the importance of the jury, complete with a badly acted mock trial. Most of the morning was completely dull and unimportant--I did the LA Times crossword puzzle, I read two National Geographics, an Entertainment Weekly, and a Newsweek, and listened to my malfunctioning iPod for a total of 1 song before it froze and wore out the battery. I should mention, on the back of the summons it said business attire was suggested, so I wore my ugly khakis and the usual blouse and cardigan, which is the closest thing I could muster. Little did I know, no one follows this business dress code. I would say a quarter of the people were dressed business casual and everyone else looked like a farmer.

Around two in the afternoon is when it finally got interesting. The first court called for jurors and lo and behold I was part of the first round of prospective jurors. Yay! So we had to go upstairs to Courtroom 20 and wait outside briefly. The bailiff, who, by the way, was really good-looking, called us into the courtroom and started cracking all these jokes about how we didn't want to be there. I was really surprised how informal he was--the lawyers were even laughing--although I glanced at the defendant and he was definitely not amused. Actually he looked quite miserable. At one point, the lawyers were both conferring with the judge and the bailiff made some wise crack and the prosecutor turned around and totally gave him the stinkeye. The most interesting part was how the attorneys started sizing us up right away. Their eyes would just flicker from person to person as we walked in, like hawks. The DA was this young, tall, clean-cut blond guy and the defense attorney was this older, fatter, balding guy--so exactly what you would expect based on movie stereotypes.

The judge came in, we took our admonition not to perjure ourselves when requesting excuses, and then he asked for everyone who wanted to be excused due to hardship. I'd say 40% of the room requested excuses, and mostly because they would not be reimbursed for work. Surprisingly (to me anyway), most everyone who requested it was excused. The best excuse was this lady who said she was hypoglycemic and had to eat every couple of hours and she had noticed that the sign said there was no eating allowed in the courtroom, but if she could eat her nuts then maybe she could serve. Everyone kind of chuckled a little, but I made the mistake of looking at the bailiff, who was trying very hard to stifle his laughter--I mean, he was turning red--and then of course I had to stop myself from laughing because he looked ridiculous. Anyway, the rest of us were then left for selection, which is called voir dire, according to Wikipedia. The judge also said it was a domestic violence case and would last about 4 days.

I was called in the first round and we had to sit in the jury box, which honestly felt very strange. We had to give our name, occupation, residence, etc. etc. and then answer all these questions about whether we had ever been involved in crimes, if our families had ever been victims, if we knew cops or lawyers, etc. etc. I was really surprised to hear that many of the other prospective jurors had been affected by crimes--assault, drunk driving, battery--their experiences were completely in opposition to anything I've ever experienced. Out of sheer coincidence, my 7th grade PE teacher was in that jury box with me and I found out things about her I'd never hazarded to even think about. I was second in the jury box and basically had nothing to say, since I'm 22 and have zero life experience. In that instance, I felt like I stuck out like a very sore thumb. That was the first time I thought for sure I'd be chucked.

They excused us for 15 minutes and that was when I caught up with my PE teacher, who I didn't think would remember me, but she did. That was really weird--she looked exactly like I remember and I couldn't believe it had been 9+ years since I'd seen her. When we went back inside, the defender began to ask questions. I was second to be questioned and his inquiries started out pretty innocuous--where did you go to school, what was your major, what was your last job--then they got increasingly more complex. I thought he was a bit condescending, to be honest, but he was like this with everyone, not just me. He asked if I had ever been accused of something by my parents when I was innocent, and it took all I had not to roll my eyeballs at him. Did he really think I needed a fifth-grade analogy? I said, of course, many times, and he asked me how I felt. I could only think of "resentful," so I said that. Then he started asking me all these questions about whether I thought a person might lie on the stand and whether their testimony might be untrue (yes and yes). Finally he asked me some complicated question along the lines of what life experience would I call upon to determine why they might lie or something like that. I still don't even know what he really meant by that, so I answered truthfully, "I guess I might put myself in their place" which when I said it I knew right away was going to get me chucked. The lawyer practically recoiled, made this big ass mark on his legal pad and moved onto the next person. I guess he thought I'd empathize with the alleged victim.

Anyway, at four-thirty we were only about 2/3 of the way through the first group and the judge said we could leave. So I still have to go back tomorrow, sit in the jury box, wait for the rest of the questioning by the defender, then the prosecutor's questioning and then see if I get excused. I'm pretty sure I'm not going to last long, but we'll see.