“Civic Duty”

I was really excited the first time I was picked for jury duty.   I saw it as an important part of my civic duty and, since I’d never really been in trouble, I didn’t know much about the legal system.  So when I got the letter in the mail explaining the “one day or one trial” system in Allegheny County I couldn’t wait to see how it all worked.

The first time I was tagged it was for Civil court.  I spent the day being herded from room to room, being asked seemingly meaningless questions and by the end of the day, feeling rejected.  I took my $8.65, which didn’t even pay for parking, and went home.

2-3 years later I was called again and, again, it was for Civil court.  However, this time I had done my homework and talked with lots of people who had been there before and, apparently, they don’t really want you to know anything about anything.  This time I took lots of reading material and upon arrival parked myself next to a middle-aged man in a nice business suit.  We immediately struck up a conversation and he told me that he could predict with 100% reliability who wouldn’t be selected for Jury duty.  This of course peaked my interest.  He said that neither he nor I would be selected since we were both middle aged working men.  He said that race didn’t matter at all, he was African-American, if you had a job, chances were you probably had an opinion, and/or, knew a little about a lot or were an expert on something.  Either way, they weren’t interested.  On the other hand, if you were an old man, you might get picked because they figured they could manipulate you into believing just about anything.  I was really get to like this guy!  Finally, he said that non-working women had the highest chance of getting picked, regardless of age, which he called the Oprah factor.  As far as working women were concerned, it was all based on what they did for a living.

By the end of the day his theory was proven, at least by one day’s worth of observations!  I had lunch with a group of ladies from my jury pool and they reinforced the theory.  One of the potential jurors was a flight attendant and even though she had a Master’s degree in education, she guaranteed me that she would be selected because of her current job.  She was right and she smiled and winked as they marched her and her 12 new best friends out of the courtroom.  At the end of the day I again felt like a bastard step child.

My next selection didn’t come for 5 years and by then I thought they had just given up on me.  I figured I’d get my one day of rejection and, since it was the day before Thanksgiving, I’d be back to work on Monday.  The only difference this time was that it was Criminal court.  There’s a job in the court called a Tipstaff and if I ever had to work in a court, I think I’d like to sign up.  As best I can tell, he’s the guy who herds the jurors and makes things work behind the scenes.  So when I showed up for criminal court, the system worked a little different.

I ended up in a jury pool for a murder trial and they were a bit more, shall I say, serious.  We were herded into a very quiet court room and led one by one through a door.  Once someone went through the door, they never came back so what happened in the next room was a mystery.  After two hours it was finally my turn.   In the room was a table with, obviously, a lawyer at each end and in the middle, a sleazy looking guy in a bad suit.  The Tipstaff asked me to take a seat across from the sleazy guy and the fun began.  I was told that the accused killer was the guy in the bad suit.  They then asked me where I lived, if I was married and what my wife’s name was, did I have any kids and how old they were.  Not comforting questions to answer sitting across from an accused murderer!  Luckily, he didn’t look like the sharpest tack in the box.  They started down the list of boring questions and I dutifully answered where I went to school, how long I had lived at my current address, if anyone in my family had been a victim of a crime.  Everyone seemed bored and I got the impression that this wasn’t there first day of this.  The boredom ended when they asked the next question.  It was, “Do you know anything about guns?”.  Now that was a good question.  With a straight face I answered, “I’m an expert marksman (at least by Air Force standards) with a .38, 9mm, and M-16”.  The conversation perked up significantly and I explained that I was in the Air Force.  They wanted to know what I did so I attempted to describe the Stan/Eval process and how the job was about having high standards and holding others to those standards and busting even your best friend if he screwed up.  I was on a roll.  I figured that they’d be terrified of having someone on the jury who had any kind of personal standards let alone high ones and that they’d want someone who knew nothing about guns and could be manipulated.  Home free, Thanksgiving turkey!

I joked a little with the defense attorney who was prior enlisted in the Air Force, and the Tipstaff directed me into the next room.  The door closed behind me and I heard lots of laughing through the wall.  30 seconds later the door swung and the Tipstaff hopped through with a big smile on his face.  “You’re in!” were the first words from his mouth.  Flabbergasted I asked, “How’d that happen?”.  “You said all the right things!  They loved that stuff about busting your best friend if he screwed up and being objective is what your job is all about.  You gave the best answers I’ve ever heard.”   As it turns out, they’d been at it for three days and I was the last one to get selected.

They let us go for the weekend and, luckily, the courts aren’t open on Black Friday.  So Monday morning we all showed up ready for the long haul.  But, after a three hour wait in a tiny hot room, we were told that the star witness had jumped from a second story window when they went to pick him up and they couldn’t find him.  The trial would have to be rescheduled.  They thanked us for our service and sent us on our way with $17.30 and a new appreciation for why government is not the solution for the human condition.