Lucked Out with Jury Duty

Just a quick update--I ended up lucky at jury duty, today. Sure, my cell phone was dead and I couldn't connect my PowerBook to the 'net anywhere (without paying $4/hr or $10 for the day), but in the end it wasn't so bad. After a couple hours killed sitting around playing my DS, I got sent into a court room where I proceeded to sit and watch prospective jurors get questioned by the judge and then the two lawyers. This took FOREVER... which is a good thing.

Noon rolled around and they gave us 90 minutes for lunch, which was useless for me, since I'm broke and even if I wasn't, there's no place around the airport courthouse to walk to. Sure, you can drive place, but, again, I don't have a car and my bike's out of commission. So, at 1:30pm it was back in the courtroom where I suddenly realized how much waiting to be selected is like being on Survivor Island--only, you want to get voted off.

So, these questions are all, essentially, about how dumb you are. If you understand how trials work, they want you to stay. If you're an idiot or you choose not to play along with the whole "innocent until proven guilty" thing, you get kicked off. The problem is, when you get kicked out of the jury box, someone from the audience has to replace you. Today, that was me for about 5 hours.

White-knuckled, sweaty brow, cold chills, the whole deal--something about the entire experience was nerve wracking. And it only got worse as the hours passed because I knew the closer I got to the end of the day, the more likely it was that I'd get picked to replace some dumb/clever prospective juror. Finally, the two lawyers agreed to the jury and the two alternates and I was still in the audience--BUT WAIT--the judge then explains that they want two more alternate jurors, even though they have two already!!

This was very odd to me because I've always understood that two alternates were all that was normally needed. They call out two more juror ID numbers and neither are mine. The two jurors are asked questions and it's obvious both are going to get rejected. I can feel it as the entire audience of remaining prospective jurors tensed up.

The judge then asks for the two lawyers to meet her in "sidebar" for a short off-the-record discussion. "Sidebar" means away from the courtroom, but still in it--just sort of in the corner, or whatever. Anyway, so they do--she comes back and explains that in the interest of time the two lawyers have been kind enough to agree to having just two alternates and that we're excused.

YES!!!

However, we still have to head back to the juror assembly room where prospectives are dispatched to courtrooms. Luckily, it was 4pm and they let us go!

This means that thanks to LA's "1 day, 1 trial" system, I'm DONE!

Of course, knowing my luck with jury duty, I'll get my next summons card in 12 months time... just after I'm eligible to serve again.

Once every twelve months they say... I seem to get summons every year but never get called in...

Oh well...