A Civic Duty

The legal system is often a mystery, and we, its priests, preside over rituals baffling to everyday citizens. — Henry Miller

I had the same reaction that everyone does when receiving the envelope in the snail mail marked, Jury Notice. There is that inner grown and that feeling of absolute dread. Immediately, the mind races quickly through all sorts of calculations.

When will I have to report? Will it interfere with my own plans? Can I come up with an adequate excuse to get out of it? What if….?

This never ending deluge of these and similar variables cascade into our stream of conscience as we humans pour over the calculus, and this generally happens before the perforation is even torn on the envelope to read the contents.

At that time the envelope I held was merely a questionnaire — as I was to discover when I finally opened it — but automatically I knew it started that unseen countdown clock for when the actual summons, the actual envelope that would be my discontent, would arrive. For me, that was roughly five months. It didn’t arrive during the summer, nor overlap somehow with my annual business trip to Montreal, and so that thrush of initial thoughts that had overwhelmed me amounted to a conditioned overreaction that proved folly. I suppose, in the grand scheme of our democratic institutions and judiciary, that time frame isn’t all that bad. However, it cannot be discounted that the starter’s pistol had in fact been fired, and the countdown had begun. There was no escaping that fact either.

There is a great disdain for jury duty. An almost visceral response to the notice. As much as everyone wishes to talk about ‘democracy’ and ‘civil duty,’ it’s one of those aspects that everyone publicly staunchly believes in, but wants someone else to handle so they don’t have to be bothered. How utterly American! (The U.S. Census Bureau reports that roughly 65%+ of eligible voters exercised that privilege in the Presidential Election of 2024. Voting — the other civic duty that most Americans are indifferent to.)

This is never more true the older one gets. Which is ironic in a way because, presumably, if anyone would have time to serve on a jury it would be the retired among us. For those of us toiling at our jobs there is a genuine inconvenience — not only on our part but on that of our employer. Doubly so if one is self-employed and they are the business, and it cannot function without them. So that visceral reaction can be understandable within that context.

For the retirees it is decidedly different, and all things being equal and discounting those that have a physical impairment or are in poor health due to advancing age (although this admittedly could afflict any age group) for the moment, the overreaction to get back home and do ‘nothing’ is hysterically self-serving. Perhaps they garden, or work on the lawn, or paint the fence like some Tom Sawyer-like setting, but they are in fact the things of life, of retired life, that can be done at anytime. So to be frustrated on having to report for jury duty in this regard is decidedly misplaced.

Not everyone mind you. I confess I am painting a very broad brush stroke here. My comments are specifically tagged with the context of, ‘In General.”

When I did show up on my reporting date there was — as to be expected — a very large cross section of people — different ethnicity, ages, and backgrounds. Some of retirees in fact brought a book (as I had done as well) for companionship during the inescapable moments of inactivity. This is the sign of the veterans of jury duty that have been called several times before, and are resigned to the fact they might be called again should their age exceed the next six-year grace period of post-service. However, by and large, the ones that complained the most while waiting for the front doors of the courthouse to be unlocked (our reporting time was 8:30 a.m.) were in fact senior citizens. The type that didn’t bring a book because they never read them, or a phone to listen to an audio book because they also struggle with how to place the phone on silent/vibrate. Nor did they read the instructions that said the front doors would be unlocked at 8:30 a.m. on the day of reporting. The exact wording that I received in both text and email precisely read:

“Please read carefully the following as there are three separate instructions, otherwise some information maybe missed.

The courthouse doors will open at 8:30 a.m. and you must arrive by 8:45 to be processed by security. Then proceed to the jurors room (clearly marked) for orientation.”

The first fail — if one can call it — was the wording ‘Please read carefully.’ In this day and age this is a tall task. Particularly by the elderly as has been my experience. Or perhaps to put it more accurately, “They read what they think is the truth, or want to believe; not what actually is written.” (Again, politicians are skillful manipulators of such folk.)

There was one gentleman who I labeled Lurch (you will find I gave pet names to my fellow jurors) who was the post child for someone retired. Lurch was tall and lanky, his hair thinning and shocked white — no doubt it was blond uncounted decades ago — who wore jeans and a blue T-shirt. He was miffed from the get go for having to report on such a brilliant morning which was cloudless, blue, and truly perfect in all aspects of temperature and radiating sunshine. It was around 8:20 and I closed the book I was reading in my vehicle to join the gathering humanity outside the courthouse doors. In another ten minutes they’d be opened, and so I figured I might as well get in line with everyone else. When I walked up Lurch was clearly stammering.

“See, this is your tax dollars at work. They tell you to report at 8:00 and the doors are locked!”

I could not let this go, and so I said to him directly, “Really, all the documentation — from the juror summons itself, to the email, to the text messages I signed up for all said the same thing. The doors would be unlocked at 8:30, and judging from past experience they don’t open them until precisely that time.”

“Yeah? Well, I called and the machine said eight o’clock.”

“Well, I can’t speak to the answering machine, but it’s 8:28 and here we are.”

Lurch ignored me, which was fine, and no doubt he found my comments ‘fake news’ just like the moon landing.

When the doors did open I lost Lurch somewhere through security and the metal detector, but his voice was unmistakable halfway through the jurors’ orientation meeting when he called out the county worker when they unwittingly asked if, “There were any questions?”

“Yes! Why did you have us come here at eight o’clock when you don’t even open the damn doors.”

With a smile the worker was polite but firm. “We like to start at nine, but we ask you to arrive after eight-thirty because we know it takes time to process everyone through security.”

“Yeah, but your message said to be here at eight. Why waste our time getting here so early?”

“Sir, the outgoing message on the machine said the doors unlock at 8:30, and that you arrive no later that eight-forty five so we can start on time.”

“No it didn’t,” Lurch persisted, “it said eight o’clock.” He was huffy and irritated.

“Sir, I know what the message said because it is my voice on the outgoing message. I recorded it and I know what I said, and I said eight-thirty.”

I held in a small bark of laughter. This effectively shut Lurch up for the remaining portion of the orientation, but he continued to fidget uncomfortably refusing to believe anything the clerk said. When at the end the clerk asked if there was some reason anyone cannot serve today please come up to the front and form a line — we’ll go over your situation — Lurch was near the front of it. Apparently his request was granted because we did not see Lurch for the remainder of our service. My guess is the clerk also was more than welcome to accommodate his reasoning for not being able to serve just to have him leave. In the end both sides got what they wanted.

I wish the same could be said about Luigi. When there was a pause during the orientation, or during the jury selection process in the courtroom, Luigi took the mantle left by Lurch as the most impatient and annoying individual of the day.

Luigi held the appearance consistent with a stereotypical caricature of an Italian pizzeria owner. At anytime you felt confident he was more than capable of spinning and tossing fresh dough high into the air to make your favorite pie. Both days that we were ungraced by his presence he wore a faded black T-shirt and shorts — both articles speckled with what was likely white paint. (Apparently this civic duty called him away from painting his garage door.) One felt his imposing frame likely strains scales to their limit, and each step seemed to require large, deep, heavy breaths. This would continue while he was seated to the point of concern of most cardiologists (one shouldn’t struggle breathing while seated!), but this continuous heavy breathing also exasperated his unmistakable impatient deep sighs.

He sported a large bushy walrus mustache, and he was topped with large ‘Side-show Bob-like’ dusty dark hair that was unkept; with only a slight trace of white streaks denoting advancing years. The mustache, though, really completed persona, and produced an unmistakable aura that he was fully capable of tying our heroine to the train tracks and still make it back for the gunfight at three o’clock high, or to the restaurant before the pizza in the oven burned.

Luigi was the most impatient of the bunch. I had the unfortunate distinction of accidentally sitting next to him in the courtroom on Day 1. (Something I rectified by staying clear in another line later that afternoon and on Day 2.) He was prone to continually heavy and annoyed sighs of impatience by all of the court’s regime to detail.

“Come on…” was a frequent phrase of his between exhaustive breaths, in soft undertones, of course, only audible by those seated nearest. He was most exasperated by the procedural aspects of the court proceedings. This wasn’t a Perry Mason episode, nor a Law & Order. Obviously, this is reality and each statement by the judge, generally a list of specific instructions to potential jurors that he also was reading from a prepared script in a white binder that was slightly visible on the bench in front of him so there would be no error; that needed to be recorded into the official record. I understood this, and I think most of us as potential jurors did as well, but for Luigi, it appeared to all be too much. The result of each statement of the judge, or a repeat of questions and verification and points as regards to the process of jury selection, was met with a series of cascading sighs by Luigi.

When court wasn’t in session most of us returned to our reading materials. Others talked quietly waiting about such things that strangers talk about in these situations. The weather. What is the likelihood of me being called next? Are they going to finish today? For Luigi it was a continuing cascading avalanche of, “Why do they have to repeat themselves constantly?” or “Why do they have to talk to me like I’m an idiot.” That latter one I considered low hanging fruit and held the utmost restraint and didn’t engage.

One thing that surprised me, at least from our juror pool that was revealed during our questioning, was just how little education there is in the county. When questioned on what was the highest level of education many of the answers were, “Some college,” or “high school only,” and others hadn’t even completed that. By my estimation I was only one of three people with a master’s degree. A few more with bachelor’s, and I recall there being one associates. Everyone else was either high school or high school drop out. Now this unscientific sample size may not be the most indicative of the county in general, but if one wonders why in a political context a populous swings heavily in the direction of one color or not I think you can look no further than the dominate education of the population — or lack there of.

To be completely transparent, I held a measure of guilt over my initial visceral (common) reaction when I received that initial jury questionnaire so many months ago. Guilt in the sense that I discovered that I did find the process, the true legal process,  fascinating from a spectator’s perspective. Law does not interest me, it is never a career that I was remotely interested in, and still isn’t, but to see the inner workings of it does provide perspective. It can be fun to people watch, and to gather a large segment of the population together and force strangers to co-exist with each other for two days can be entertaining.

It is said that jury duty is our civic duty, and yet when push comes to shove there’s nothing civil about it. It is something everyone believes in, but wants someone else to do. Which makes it, quite ironically, an uncivil outlook on the system as a whole. I like to think that this experience has reminded me of the fact to its importance, and that the next time — in perhaps six or seven years — I receive a jury questionnaire in the mail I won’t have that same knee jerk reaction as so many of us often have. For if we don’t step up to do it when called, who will?