Civics

Last month, I got called up for Jury Duty for the first time in over 10 years.  I’m sure that for those who work in and around our criminal justice system, (and I know a few)  none of the following will come as much of a shock or surprise—but for someone like me who assumes that it’s only in show business and used car sales that you encounter this level of  incompetence and inept “wool over the eyes” pulling, it is something of an eye-opener.

First I receive a summons in the mail telling me to report on a particular date about a month hence.  A week later I receive another summons requiring that I report on a different date.  Is it the same summons with two dates? Two different summons for separate dates? Which do I heed?  Call to find out answer.  Call resolves nothing cause system only has record of one summons, but that doesn’t automatically void the other.  I'm instructed to show up for earlier date and resolve on premise.  

Martin Luther King Jr. Statue outside
Westchester County Courthouse

On appointed day I arrive and join 100 some odd others in a large auditorium in White Plains Westchester County Courthouse.  We listen to instructions and during the break I approach someone with my multiple summons query.  She sends me upstairs. Upstairs I sit in room with a woman who checks the system and can’t find the corresponding record.  She gives me a form to fill out and submit to someone on a different floor.  I fill it out, proceed to next floor and wait in waiting room.  I enquire as to the consequences of being absent from the group in the auditorium downstairs.  No clear instruction other than…”you can join them when you’re done up here.”  Finally it's my turn, and I’m excused from second summons without learning how it came to be sent in the first place.  I return to auditorium downstairs.  It’s empty.  Find someone in the hall who tells me to go to the second floor.  

On second floor I’m directed to a small room (much like a school classroom) where about a dozen other would be jurors are sitting awaiting next steps and all facing a desk and a podium that are currently unoccupied.  We sit in silence for about 10 minutes and on a hunch, I decide to go find someone who can tell me if I'm waiting in the correct place.  I find out that I'm not.  I locate the proper room and join this other group, much like the last. 

I read my book for next 20 minutes until five men of disparate age, skin color and body type--all in identical dark suits-- stride in.  Looks at first glance that it’s two sets of lawyer/client and a court official. Court official tells us the story of the case.  We learn that the foursome is really made up of lawyer/lawyer and lawyer/lawyer.  One lawyer is suing another for fees (allegedly) owed due to…well, it’s a long and not very compelling tale, the gist of which is that one lawyer hired a  lawyer and then fired him and hired another and the two lawyers (and their lawyers)  are bickering over who owes who and how much.  The two lawyers for the lawyers take turns going round the room and asking each of us a few questions about our attitudes and/or preconceived notions re: lawyers, lawyer’s fees, people who sue other people or hire lawyers to sue other people and people who fire people they hire to sue other people.  All of us in the room are yawning almost in unison. One of the lawyers is almost a cartoon caricature of a manipulative and patronizing legal lizard.  As he poses questions to each individual prospective juror, he couches his queries in tones one often hears in adults who speak to children as if the child has the vocabulary of a Parrot and not the faintest idea about the relationship between causes and effects. 


Someone (Mort Sahl?)  during the Bush/Gore campaign said :  “Bush speaks English like it’s his second language and Gore speaks it like it's ours.”


This obsequious inelegant examiner asks each of us identical questions, but rephrases them each time to fit his notion of who he is addressing.  He's using a combination of racial profiling and class conscious assumptions and, to me at least, it's transparent, disrespectful,  and worst of all, time consuming.   

As much of his probing seems to consist of eliciting our opinions and attitudes about lawyers in general, it occurs to me that this particular lawyer is single handedly doing a good job of confirming the prejudices of those of us who have prejudices and providing a good reason for those among us who don’t to begin cultivating a few. 

After about an hour of this from both sides, we are left alone again for a while until a functionary enters the room and reads off a half dozen names.  They’re the ones who have to stay.  The rest of us are excused, and we’re each handed a document confirming our service and releasing us back into the wild.  I always expect to be excused since I work in the entertainment business which I believe is generally perceived by my interrogators as closely related to what they do--which is basically storytelling, and more specifically, creating the illusion of truth through the art of subjective narrative . They see me as someone who's wise to their tricks and the last thing a magician wants in his audience is another magician.  I walk out with a woman who tells me as we head to the elevators that had she been chosen, she would have told them that she couldn’t serve because she would've been inclined to vote in favor of anything or anyone on the opposing side of that particularly pompous lawyer.  I laughed and said I might have been inclined to do the same.  We also found it sad and amusing to note that those retained for service seemed to be those most easily swayed and manipulated by that guy.  Kinda sad…not to mention scary when you think about the decisions and outcomes that are the consequences of this all too human and flawed process.

I should’ve seen it coming... 

the moment …

…I saw John Edwards primping, and primping and primping with his hair before a TV interview

…I drove that nail into the wood thinking “ This won’t split it.”

…I heard Dick Cheney say that he didn’t feel obligated to disclose the nature/extent of his ties to Haliburton or reveal the content of discussions/decision in Dept. of Energy.  How he got away with that I'll (and we'll) never know.    

…I read that Jonathan Franzen said "Reading The Art of Fielding is like watching a hugely gifted young shortstop: you keep waiting for the errors, but there are no errors."...that the book would be full of them. 

I read that Greece was going to increase the number of civil servants to be suspended (again); cut monthly pensions of people under the age of 55 (again); lower the the tax-free limit on annual income (again) and impose a new real-estate tax…(again).

A fun site with a great tagline: If you can't see it below, it reads:


FIGHTING IGNORANCE SINCE 1973 (IT'S TAKING LONGER THAN WE THOUGHT)