2sidedfigure.net

I probably still shouldn't discuss the details of my recent jury duty experience, despite being dismissed. So I'll apologize in advance to the two involved parties, the people of the great state of California and the defendant whose name here on forth will be changed (to protect his innocence) to OJ. Now I didn't choose OJ because our man was up on double or even single murder charges, I simply chose it because I thought a post on the judicial system of California should contain a reference to its most infamous case in recent history. If you want to draw any conclusions between what I may be trying to say about said judicial system and the aforementioned case, be my guest, although that one's on you as I'm just trying to be funny.

So let's begin long before the last two business days involving my trips downtown, way back to my jury duty postponement effort that brought me in contact with the lovely and seductive automated voice of the phone-in registration system. One might think that when trying to select a day to postpone to, you would be given the opportunity to try and select multiple days in one phone call should the first day you select be unavailable for deferment. Not so my friend, not so. Instead, you must call back repeatedly, methodically incrementing through the business days of the next three months, one phone call by patience taxing phone call. If not for that sexy automated voice, i might've wanted to throw my phone twice the distance I actually felt the urge to. They might as well make it a toll call and divert what I'm sure would be an obscene amount of funds to invest in a wireless connection in the potential jurors' waiting room so that I might have written this diatribe a few days sooner.

Apart from that though, the system is run surprisingly well, even though I was called back for an additional day only to be summarily dismissed a few hours later. But even that carried with it faint amusement as I was the only potential juror on my selected jury panel to not be interviewed. As such, it gave me the wonderful opportunity to sit back and pass judgement on all the other potential jurors being interviewed, particularly when they were clumsily delivering their poorly crafted and thinly veiled excuses and prejudices in order to escape their civic duty.

In particular, my favorite was a gentleman (and I spare no sarcasm there) who upon being interviewed laid down prejudice against the defendant's race, feigned abhorrance at his alleged crime (when previously exclaiming loudly before being chosen he would be enthusiastically in favor of legalizing drugs across the board — yes, it was a drug case), and then stumbled when asked which side he favored. Our specimen was, you guessed it, a pompous real estate agent, hair slicked back, wearing only the trendy-est in club attire and wing-tip boots, falling just short of saying he had more important drinking and wooing of ladies of the night to do.

In addition to the so-full-of-it-right-winger-if-I-wanted-crap-I'd-squeeze-his-head was the potential juror decrying so leftist a position that if the defendant were Pablo Escobar himself he would've moved for acquittal because his wife died tragically from complications of an excessive cocaine habit.

To round it all off, you would've been astounded by the number of potential jurors who admitted to having previously caught cases on drug possession charges. Way to go Nancy Regan!

In awkward conclusion, I suppose the moral of the story is to not shrug off your jury service and claim you never received the summons. Go, serve your proud country/state/county/city/district/province/treefort and indulge in the madness that is others trying to escape that same duty. If nothing else it's a poorly paid vacation from work.