Midway through our second day of hanging around the courthouse, the http://www.artisticwhim.com/blog/archives/2006/01/jury_duty.html returned to the PA and let us all go home. People screamed and shouted with glee. No, really. They jumped up and shouted, “hooray!” then made a beeline for the door. They were kids given a free recess. That fits perfectly with the way one of my fellow potential-jurist’s described the last few days: “it’s like detention for adults”. For me, this my sixth call to jury duty without being assigned a case. Twelve days of my life spent being a captive of the jury system. It gave me a lot of time time to ponder: how do they pick people for this tour of duty?
Theoretically, it’s random. A computer blindly chooses via the mathematics of random numbers. It sure doesn’t seem random: This is the sixth time in 12 years I’ve been called. No, make it the seventh if you count the time I came home from jury duty only to find another jury summons waiting in my mailbox. (They nicely excused that one for me). Seven times. I have a friend who’s lived here for 10 years — she hasn’t been called once. Most of my other friends who’ve lived for more than a few years have been called once, maybe twice. Me, I’m practically a jury duty regular — like Norm from cheers, I almost expect the clerks to call, “Hey, Rob!” when I walk in.
I’d like to think it is my stunning intellect and decisiveness. They know my remarkable qualities so they call on me frequently. Except, once I get there, they never actually choose to use me. If I ever got into a courtroom, I’d love to respond to their questions with absolute silence — make them wait a bit for me. If it weren’t for those pesky contempt rules, I’d do it.
Seriously, though, I’d love to get on a case. I think it’d be fascinating, and, who knows, maybe it’d give me fodder for a screenplay. I also think it’s important to do. Though our court system does make mistakes, it’d be a much worse system without peer juries.
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January 12th, 2006
by JoAnne
Loved it…In California, they use DMV (they say they don’t but they do) which is why Wolfram just got a call to jury duty. He still has a valid California driver’s license and even though I send in the reply that he is not a citizen and doesn’t live in the country, he gets at least one a year.
January 13th, 2006
by Ana
I heard that the computer algorith has a special if condition that says:
IF name = ‘Rob McKaughan’
AND current_year is odd
AND city = ‘Seattle’
THEN call(jury_duty)
just kidding
January 14th, 2006
by Rob
Aha! I bet you’re the one who hacked in and installed the code. At last, some answers.
Very cute.