Jill, Your Jury Has Reached a Verdict

So, I wrote about how I was summoned for jury duty here. Well, I attempted to get out of jury duty by being on the call-in list, but on the very first day of my calling-in, I had to go in. So, for anyone who lives in Hennepin County, Minnesota, if you get your summons, don't bother with the call-in status option. You have to go in anyway.

On the first day, I was put into a room in the basement of the Government Center with a couple of hundred other potential jurors. The room shook with the traffic on Sixth Street in downtown Minneapolis going over our heads. With all those adults sweltering for eight hours a day in such an enclosed space, the room had what can only be described as a locker room smell . We had to watch a video about the jury duty process. Then we sat and waited. And waited some more. We could sign out to leave the room for five to ten minutes at a time if we put our names on a dry erase board.

Eventually they called some names to go upstairs to be interviewed for a jury. Then they called some more names. Then, shocking, they called my name. I later learned that you were assigned a random number when you checked in and the numbers were randomly chosen whenever a new jury had to be pulled.

I went upstairs with the other potential jurors and we underwent voir dire. This is the process by which the lawyers get rid of potential jurors who might be prejudiced against their side for some reason or another. It was a case about an individual suing an insurance company for money. This individual was an adult woman who, when she was fifteen, rode on the trunk of a car around a cul-de-sac and, shockingly enough, fell off the back of the car and suffered brain damage.

The lawyers asked us questions. When it got around to me, the lawyer for the insurance company asked me about the court monitoring I do. I explained about how we watched particular criminal cases to make sure the system was working and to offer recommendations to fix things we thought were problematic. He said, "so do you think the criminal justice system is fair?" And I laughed. It was as if he hadn't heard a word I had said. He said, "so is that a no?" And I said, "I think it's certainly biased in a lot of ways." And, to no one's surprise, I was excused.

I had to go back to the jury room. All afternoon I sat there and all afternoon nothing happened.

Tuesday, I sat. All day. Eight hours in that room. By hour six, the rumblings from the cars over my head were making me queasy and a bit unsettled. I used the time to annotate a book about predictions for the next Harry Potter novel with Post-It notes for one of my friends. We were able to leave at 4 instead of 4:30.

Wednesday morning. I am officially sick of having to get up at 6:30 in the morning. Meanwhile, I haven't been to school all week and I'm getting frantic emails from students. I push my office hours back until after jury duty later on that evening and pass on an email to my students letting them know. Wednesday morning passes. During the lunch hour break, I call everyone I can think of who might be even remotely interested and tell them how much jury duty sucks.

By Wednesday afternoon, those of us left in the jury room are about ready to revolt. There's a big felony case and they call forty names. Mine is not one of them. Then they call twelve names for some civil case. Ah, it's me for voir dire again.

This time it's a case about who should pay for the damage caused by an overflowing toilet in a condo building. No joke.

The lawyers don't care about my history of court monitoring. Surely I understand that this is a civil case and I monitor criminal cases. Surely it won't impact my ability to be fair and impartial. Have I ever lived somewhere where a toiled has overflowed? No? Great. Do I own my own home? No? Great. Do I have any children? No? Great.

NGS, you are hired. You are on a jury.

Here's where it gets a bit anti-climactic. Testimony and lawyer arguments last for about five hours. It's boring. It lasts through the rest of Wednesday and on to Thursday morning. It's clear to everyone that the insurance company should pay because the woman who owned the condo had done nothing wrong. This case was such a complete waste of resources. A jury trial with six jurors, a lawyer on each side, a judge, a clerk, and a court recorder. For a matter of less than $8000? Bullshit.

We go to deliberate. The clerk, Jill, takes away our cell phones. She puts drinks down on the table in the jury deliberation room. She gives us copies of all the evidence. She gives us a walkie talkie and tells us that we should call her when we reach a verdict. She locks us into this room.

We deliberate for fifteen minutes.

We're back in the jury room or, as many of us jurors call it, the pit of hell, before noon on Thursday. Did you know it's possible that you can be on more than one jury?

By four o'clock on Thursday afternoon, the people in the jury room tell us we can leave for the week. And since we've been such good little jury people, we will be placed on the call-in status for the next week. We are reassured that there's only a 5-10% chance we'll be called back in, so I play the odds and say good-bye to the jury room.

And I can now say that I have done my civic duty. And I can now say I never want to be part of the jury process again. The court employees told us on the first day that most people are upset when they get their summons, but when they serve on a jury, they are glad they were a part of the process. I was the complete opposite. I was quite excited to get my summons, but was quite disappointed by how utterly ridiculous and wasteful the process was.