2004-01-29 - 10:47 p.m.
WEEK #2
So lemme tell you a little bit about my week. I had to go to jury duty, that sure stunk. It stunk so bad it should be called jury dootie.
I've only been called for jury duty twice in my whole life. The first time was pretty awful. I had to get there at 8:45 in the morning, which I did, but apparently there's some unwritten rule that you should actually get there 10-15 minutes early. I walked in and the whole room was filled with people. There was no place to sit. I wanted to cry and go home.
But I stuck with it and after a while we were taken to the courtroom. I'd never been inside a courtroom, on account of all my paternity suits being settled before trial. They called up about 20 people to sit in the jury box, one of them not being me. Then they asked those 20 people questions about whether they could serve or not.
I had to sit there through all of it. Then, about 3 hours after I got there, some lady told me and the other uncalled people that we could go home. I got a crisp $10 and a kick out the door. What a waste of a perfectly good day.
So that brings us back to the now. I had to go at 8:45 again, but being a time-tested veteran, I knew to show up early. There were only 2 people in the room when I got there, and I took a cushy seat next to a table so I could rest my arm on it. By 8:30 the room was half full. By 8:40 it was completely full, and there was still 5 minutes before we were supposed to report there. It's crazed insanity.
So we're all sitting around and they eventually had us sign in and collect our $10. But on my way back to my seat, I saw that the old lady I'd been sitting next to had taken my seat next to the table. What's that all about? Damn her soul.
Then they told us it'd be about 20 minutes before we went to the courtroom. I know someone who works elsewhere in the building, so I went and said hi to kill some time. When it was time to head back, I headed back.
Since my seat was taken, I sat outside on the world's most uncomfortable bench and talked with a few other prospective jurors. One guy was a grizzled old timer who muttered non-stop about how disorganized the whole thing was, and how much he hated the county (who says county instead of town or city?), and how he couldn't wait to move out of state in a few weeks. I talked to another guy about the Super Bowl. He was a Dolphins fan, so his opinion obviously meant nothing.
A half hour I sat on that bench! We were supposed to be moved into the courtroom when I first came back, but nobody was telling us to go anywhere. This one woman near me on the bench kept making trips to the bathroom, so I started singing that song from the commercial. You know the one. "Gotta go, gotta go, gotta go right now." Cause, see, the commercial is about a woman juror who has to pee a lot. So it was fitting.
One scary part was when they led a bunch of prisoners past us. They had their bright orange jumpsuits on and everything. I was worried that one of them would break free of their chains and perhaps take me as a hostage, but thankfully that did not occur.
Finally, this little older guy walked up and told us bench-dwellers that we should head back into the jury room. It turned out that he was the judge on the case.
We squeezed back into the room and I had no choice but to sit down next to the seat-stealing old lady. The judge began telling us that he was very upset and wanted to apologize, then launched into the details of what was going on.
It turns out the trial we were going there for was of a suspected meth dealer, and involved undercover police work and confidential informants. A pretty big deal. But the informant, as it turned out, wasn't there to testify.
The judge seemed to be pretty mad at someone on the government side for letting the situation with the informer guy spin out of control, and talked about how the dude had been spending his informer money on drugs. Also, of the 10 or so people he was informing on, 3 were his cousins and the others were his close friends. So he was a pretty shifty, devious sort. A loner. A rebel.
During the last trial they'd done, the informer had tried saying that he didn't remember any details of the case. But they had his testimony from a preliminary hearing to use as evidence instead. In the case I was there for, they didn't have a preliminary hearing. The informant had taken off for Nebraska and they weren't able to bring him back in time for the trial that morning.
So that was it. No trial, no nothing. The defendant actually pleaded down to a lesser posession charge and apparently was going to be released later in the day.
The judge apologized and sent us on our way. Of course, the grizzled old man was sitting there muttering and nodding and shooting "told you so" looks at all of us who listened to his grizzled rant about how disorganized the county is.
That's about it. Maybe next time I'll get to make a jury and put some sucka behind bars. It's no picnic in there. I know, I've seen Oz.
GOOD BYE
