The Freedom Minute

Jury Duty – Part 1

I had meant to get this post up last week, but many other projects got in the way.

Two weeks ago I had jury duty and I thought I’d share some of my perspective on this experience. This was the first time I’ve ever been called to serve, and to tell the truth, I was kind of looking forward to it. That may seem strange, but I’ve always been intrigued by the workings of our legal system and almost chose to attend law school. I also think that serving on a jury is one of the responsibilities we have as citizens. It’s one of the few instances where the government cedes back to the people the power to make important decisions – sometimes life and death decisions. And the alternative – ceding to the government all power to arrest, try, and convict citizens for alleged breaches of the law – is not a pleasant prospect. I therefore didn’t offer any excuses trying to get out of the obligation.

The major drawback was that I was called to serve at the Metropolitan Courthouse. This is primarily a traffic court located in far downtown Los Angeles, south of the 10 and east of the 110. The commute took about 45 minutes to an hour each way – not the best use of my time as the closest court to my home is in Van Nuys, about 10 minutes away. I would think the County would want to keep jurors as close to their home court as possible in order to reduce traffic and waste of fossil fuels, but apparently that’s not much of a consideration. They did however offer the option of taking mass transit, which I accepted, primarily because taking the subway from Universal to the court was fairly convenient for me and I hated the thought of driving from downtown back to the Valley in afternoon rush hour traffic. However, if I had to take the bus or transfer more than once along the route, I would have driven.

The first day I was told to appear (which they don’t pay you for) was on Thursday and I sat around from 10:15 until about 3:30 when I was finally put into a jury pool. About 30 of us trekked down to the courtroom where we waited again until they were ready to start voir dire. This is the process where they pick the jury. We were ushered into the courtroom where the judge, prosecutor, defense attorney, and defendant were all present. We were told this was a DUI case and along with stating our name, profession, etc. (from a list of twelve stock questions) we should reveal any information that might prejudice us for this type of trial. Of course, since we started after 4:00, we only got through four people, so we were all told to return the next day at 1:30.

On Friday, although we were supposed to start at 1:30, we didn’t actually get going until about 2:30. The rest of us potential jurors gave our answers to the twelve questions. It was clear that more than a few people were hoping to be excused for various reasons, but most of the potential jurors seemed to take the process seriously and answer honestly. Then the prosecutor and defense attorney had their chance to ask more detailed questions or follow up on anything that was revealed during the initial statements. Each side got to excuse jurors for various reasons and finally twelve of us were picked with two people chosen as alternates. I was originally juror number 13, but since a couple of people were excused, I ended up one of the twelve regular jurors. Again, since we had started late, and court ends at 4:30, there was no time left in the day for additional business and we were told to report back on Monday at 1:30 to begin the trial.

At this point I should note that I was beginning to understand why so many people try to get out of jury duty. Not only had they dragged me all the way downtown, but the process was taking much longer than it had to. We were originally told that there would be three or four witnesses and the trial was expected to take five days. I initially couldn’t fathom how a DUI case with such few witnesses could take so long, but it was quickly becoming clear. In addition to ending at 4:30 every day, the court closes down for an hour and a half for lunch starting at noon, hence the 1:30 start time. I’m not sure where you work, but I’d never heard of any business closing down for an hour and a half each day for lunch. But, of course, this is the government, where apparently the employees work so hard that they have to get a half hour longer for lunch than the rest of the working world just so they don’t have a nervous breakdown. If you do the math, that’s 130 hours (or just over 16 work days) a year, every year, in lost productivity. Now before you think me some cold-hearted taskmaster, I’m just saying that in the real world, where businesses have to be profitable to survive and people work at least as hard as court employees, a half hour or, at most an hour, for lunch is generally sufficient. But since court employees are paid with a never ending supply of tax dollars, being profitable or even efficient doesn’t seem to be much of a priority. I should add, however, that everyone who worked at the court was pleasant, professional, and treated us respectfully and I was actually finding the whole experience fairly interesting.

See my next post about the trial itself.

March 9th, 2009 Posted by freedomminute | Miscellaneous | 2 comments