Duty Done

Several of you have asked how jury duty went. Here's the rundown.

I was summoned to New York Supreme Court for jury duty. In New York state, the Supreme Court is the lowest court, or the regular trial court. (Just go with it--I know it's weird, but that's how it works here.)

Basically, I showed up to a hot, crowded room. We were having unseasonably warm weather in the city, and apparently, their heating system couldn't account for that. (That's also something you just have to go with--that happens a lot here as well...New York is weird...) The crowd of us (about 100 in my room, more at other locations) received the same instructions as were on our paper notifications, and then the person in charge proceeded to answer questions regarding that exact same material several times.

Then we waited.

And waited.

They called one jury. How it works is a case is ready for a jury, so they call down and get names. I was called to the civil term, which means my group was only hearing civil cases. In New York, a civil jury is six people, plus two alternate jurors, so they needed eight for each case. They drew 32 names out of a box and sent those people in for voir dire, which is the fancy legal term for jury questioning.

My name wasn't one of them.

And then we never got another case that day. They usually have three cases per day, but that day was light, I guess. Lots of parties settled, I suspect. Eventually, they sent us home.

The next day, I came back. And we waited.

And waited.

And then just before lunch, they decided that they didn't need us for any cases and our jury service was over, and they released us. Since it was just lunchtime, I headed back to chambers to work.

One person fell asleep in one of the rooms where I sat. Well, maybe more than one person, but only one person snored.

Another person listening to his headphones kept humming along. The room was pretty silent, and he didn't seem to realize that none of us could hear the music he heard--we just heard him.

I didn't have cell service, but I did have wifi, so I got a fair amount done, and now I've done my civic duty for SIX YEARS, folks!

Not too shabby.