Jury Duty

I went in for jury duty on Monday and was picked for a civil case starting Friday. I was selected quickly because I am kinda the perfect juror: willing to be there, not dumb or smart enough to make up my mind before the trial (those people were recused), consistently awake. I even wore a goddamn jacket.

Besides the existence of an orientation video starring Ed Bradley and Diane Sawyer, the interesting thing about jury duty is the voir dire.

From the moment I got to the big juror holding room, it was clear there was a very diverse group of Brooklynites in attendence. All races and classes were represented - there was even a contingent of Hassidic Jews.

You can't escape the diversity of Brooklyn on a normal day, but the great thing about voir dire was getting to hear people speak with their own voices about themselves. It was like taking X-ray glasses on the train.

There was a retired guy who had been on a trial that dragged on for a month, a future law student, a guy in his mid-30s who thought the insurance company should just pay the victims off and be done with it, a pretty young woman who asked me if I worked for Americorps, a middle-aged woman who couldn't wrap her head around an accident without an eye-witness, and two women who didn't speak English. And that was only out of the first ten!

The only consistent thing about these people was that they had jury duty and were mildly annoyed by it. Makes me proud to be an American.

Update! (4/29/06) After two hours of waiting around, a cute woman bailiff lead me and the eleven other jurors to a small waiting room. I was planning to take the Rob Cesternino approach: hang back at first, then gradually form a working relationship with each of the other jurors over the next few days. Maybe even angle for jury foreman.

To make a short story short, we were called in to the court, told by the judge the case had been settled, dismissed and given letters that get us out of jury duty until 2012, when the universe is pretty much done for anyway. This is what's known as "lucking out."