How’d it go in court? I’ll tell you how it went in court.
If ever you are summoned to jury duty, my innocent until proven otherwise friend, tell them you are canoeing across New Brunswick in search of beaver pelts that week, and if they don’t buy it, gather up one thousand quarters, because the same government that requests, no, insists upon your assistance in executing its jurisprudence has for your alleged convenience installed special jury meters in its parking garage that swallow up a quarter every seven minutes yet accept fewer quarters than there are minutes of jury duty.
The Jury Clerk warns you that tickets will follow, and exhorts you to walk back to the garage to “plug the meter” at lunch.
It is your right as a citizen not to do this, she does not mention, and I choose to exercise that right.
The scenario I imagined during one marathon of waiting in the Jury Room is this:
While performing jury duty as ordered, I run out of quarters > parking ticket follows > I’m so busy making up the work I’ve missed during jury duty that I forget to pay the ticket > subpoena > I’m off the jury and sitting at the defendant table looking at the jury.
Inventory: Jury Waiting Room
• About 300 Americans. You know, for people who endure hundreds of aspirational ads every day for fashion, weight loss and shampoo, we don’t look like much. Did everybody here get dressed in 1975? Did you people sleep on stairs last night?
• Five hacking coughs
• 1 bowling shirt over denims evidently cut into shorts while being worn; over black sneakers over no socks.
• 2 baseball caps on backwards. Somebody’s fate today is in the hands of two brains under backward baseball caps.
• 1 Mumu (cobalt blue).
• 1 retired guy who feels the room should know that he’d rather be working on his ’55 DeSoto, which I do not tell him was a crap car the day it fell off the assembly line in a haze of blue smoke.
• 2 civil servants who bear the smug look of someone who will receive a guaranteed lifetime pension for putting check-marks beside names on a list.
• People who reek of cigarettes (see hacking coughs, above).
• Two criminals. Oh God, I’m judging the jury now. The power has already gone to my head. I am the one. I am not the one.
Several male jurors watch the young female forms in the room like a hawk watches a vole, like the eyes in a painting watch the victim walk through the drawing room in a Vincent Price movie. As a father of two girls I find that they are quite rude and should be shot – there I go again, convicting people. I am the one. I am not the one.
The lights go off and a screen comes down and they show us a 20-minute film about how to be a jury, starring citizens just like us but frozen in another time. Their meters have definitely expired.
All around the room are walls, which is not unusual nor the point, really, but walls with portraits of judges bearing you-have-jury-duty-and-I-have-a-vacation-home-in-Hilton-Head expressions. I do a surveillance lap to confirm that none of the judges is name Judy. They are not. I hope they are not shown actual size, because their high-pitched voices would make me laugh uncontrollably during the trial and I would be cited for self-contempt, which is like being cited for contempt except you already knew when you got up this morning that everything wrong in your life was your fault.
Another twenty minutes go by. I suddenly remember the phrase “vigorous plunging,” which a plumber once used when telling me why our toilet’s wax seal may have failed. It would be a good password, I think. Best keep it quiet here, though, for there are criminals about! It would also be a good cause of death,vigorous plunging; I make a mental note to speak to the coroner about this if I find his office upstairs.
Two of the guys here did not show up the last time they were summoned for jury duty, and they were threatened with arrest, so here they are. They live on the edge, guys like this. I check my juror form a second time to see that all three layers are legible, as instructed earlier.
Jury Room Inventory, continued.
• Men over 50 with ponytails: two.
• Biker with leather jacket bearing evidence of gang affiliation: one
• Members of the other 1%: one, a woman who appears to have dressed for a coronation. Do you really want to wear that Rolex around here, Mrs. Howell?
• Pregnant jurors: 1. I sure hope there will be no miscarriage of justice.
The Jury Clerk emerges from her autopension shroud to advise that, should we need more change for the meters in the garage, the change machine is located between the ice cream machine and the pop machine. Judging by the size of the people in this room, everybody has figured that out by now.
Two guys thought they had the system beat when they arrived. In our pool of 300, they were both number 250-something. “They’ll never call us!” they high-fived.
The very first call, which comes down late morning, is for jurors with numbers between 250 and 280. The pair are done for, and slink out of the room. They are probably parachuting into ‘Nam right now. They are not going to be seen again, ever. To me it smells like … victory.
For I will live to see another day. In the end, no trial for me. The parties whose trial my group was to adjudicate settled at the last minute, the Jury Clerk tells us, and we are free to go. Off the hook for another four years. Wow. I nod sagely to the portraits and head to the elevator and freedom.
On the way out of the courthouse, I see odd pairings of 75-pound crystal meth addicts, zygotes, larvae really, lives gone so far astray at 19 that you wonder how they will ever get back on the rails, and trim lawyers with black hair and Brooks Brothers suits and cap-toe oxfords. If people started throwing pies right now, I think, it’ll be a toss-up as to who to trust.
I get back to the garage. No parking ticket. Wow again.
As I drive out of the ramp, a week of rain is finally yielding to a few slivers of sunlight from the west. And I think, the sun is coming out, and you are free, Sawyer. Free to enjoy the day.
It’s not just your right. It’s your duty.
© 2012 Jeff Sawyer
