Here Come Da Judge

I've been on jury duty for the past two days. I've never been on jury duty and am finding it fascinating despite the long hours of waiting. Other people are sitting there complaining about how much time they are wasting. I notice most of these complaining folks turn up with nothing to read and nothing to do: no stitching, pocket computer, game, etc. I'm sorry for people who can't amuse themselves for awhile. Yes, the chairs in the jury assembly room aren't Laz-y-Boy quality. There's only one snack machine and one drinks machine and one coffee machine. But I don't think it justifies the complaining. Trial by jury is a right in this country, even if it's a frivolous claim. I hope none of these people have to be on the other side of the coin someday, trusting those "bored" jurors to get them out of a scrape.

Anyway, we were first divided up into eight different panels and court procedure explained to us, then we all took an oath. The panel designations are how you know whether to report the next day. You call a recorded message after six each day you serve to see if your panel needs to report. (In DeKalb County, where I got a jury summons many years ago, they divide you into panels when you get your summons. You then call up Sunday night to see if you have to report or not. In my case, I didn't.)

After waiting all morning on Monday, I was one of 30 people called to possibly serve on a jury. This was an insurance claims case, with details we could gather from the questions the different attorneys asked us. The more questions they asked, the more details you could add to what was about to go on.

It looked somewhat like a TV courtroom yet not: for one thing the lights were sure a lot brighter than they are on the box! There were banks and banks of those horrible reflective fluorescent lights like we have at work.

The other thing I thought was amusing--and the man next to me also commented on it: There's always a scene in the courtroom drama where the two counsels approach the bench and talk to the judge. They never whisper and don't you always wonder how the jury can help hearing them talk? I don't know what they did in the old days--retreat to the judge's chamber or whisper, perhaps--but at the Cobb County courtrooms the moment the attorneys walk up to the bench they turn on "white noise," a hissing sound very like the static of a television station off for the night. I thought that was kind of cool.

Also, there's no longer a court reporter typing frantically; the court reporter has a mask that looks like the bottom half of what high-altitude pilots wear for oxygen. She repeats everything everyone says into a dictating machine and I guess it is transcribed later. There are also microphones at various places in the courtroom that the court transcript can be called from.

I was not called on that jury, nor was anyone else who'd been in a car accident.

Today I didn't have to be in until nine. I was almost called for another jury pick, but before things started, we were all sent back to the jury selection room. About 11:30 panels one through six were sent home for the day while panels six to eight had to stay for a possible afternoon session. Panel 6 had also had to wait through a two and a half hour lunch yesterday and some of their folks were bitterly unhappy about it. I went home willingly because I wasn't feeling good, but had they asked Panel 5 to stay I would have just gone in the park to eat like I did yesterday--alas, I forgot to bring bread for the sparrows anyway!--and gone back to my book. What's the fuss?

Only Panels three and four have to report tomorrow, so I'm off to work. But I still have to call after 6 p.m. to see if I've been dismissed for the week or have to go in on Thursday.

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 8:47:00 PM

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