L.A. Weekly, March 15, 2002
I RECEIVE A JURY SUMMONS. IN THE PAST, I'VE always
claimed financial hardship by virtue of self-employment, and they have
been content to leave me alone. But something about this notice feels
different. Its use of the intimidating color red, the naming of an exact
time and place for me to 
appear, the
inquiring into my household expenses, the emphatically upper-case warning
that "PENALTIES, INCLUDING A POSSIBLE FINE OF UP TO $1,500.00, MAY BE
IMPOSED" for failure to respond -- all this seems to say, Not this
time, buddy.
Of course, I know there
are good reasons to get with this program. I know that I am at bottom
merely jealous of my not especially valuable time. I understand that my
presence, perhaps particularly as a person who would rather not be there,
helps keep the jury pool, like the gene pool, diverse and healthy. I dig
that the People need protection from the Government, which is not always
as Of, By or For the People as Mr. Lincoln maintained. According to the
Code of Civil Procedures, "jury service is an obligation of citizenship."
But I do not like to be obligated. I am contrary that way. Duty -- it's an
unpleasant word; it sounds scatological. And it so often comes attached to
other unpleasant words, like patriotic. But voting is a patriotic
duty, and they don't threaten you with PENALTIES, INCLUDING A POSSIBLE
FINE OF UP TO $1,500.00, for staying home on Election Day. Selective
nonparticipation is demonstrably the American
way.
But the word on the street is that
it is getting harder to avoid doing the time. It seems easier finally to
go than not to, and in order not to have to deal with the system, I decide
to deal with the system.
IN THE JURY ASSEMBLY ROOM, WHICH HAS THE AIR of an aging
airport lounge, there is a TV playing, which I take as kindly official
acknowledgment of and recompense for our purgatorial status. Many have
come prepared, in various ways, for the long day's haul, with puzzles,
portable video games, laptops, books. I myself have purchased especially
for the occasion a copy of Erle Stanley Gardner's The Case of the
Vagabond Virgin. Many people, the cashier told me, have the wrong idea
about Perry Mason because of the TV show, but Gardner "could write a
plot."
Roll is called. We're back in
high school. I'm afraid my voice will crack when I answer
"Here."
We are orientated. The day chugs
along. On television, Judge Larry Joe is dispensing Texas Justice.
Someone's bull got loose and annoyed the neighbor, and the judge offers
some personal insight: "I had a bull that come up to my uncle bobbing his
head looking for food," he drawls, "and nearly broke his leg." The
verdicts are swift and incisive and come two to the half-hour. Why
not leave justice to the professionals?
NOW I AM "ON CALL," phoning the court twice a day to see
if I have to return. Life goes on, but ever so slightly hobbled. It's like
being under a kind of mild house arrest. The consciousness of the
possibility of commitment persists as a low-level background
hum.
A week into my service (we also
serve who only phone and wait), I'm called back down to the courthouse,
and dispatched to a courtroom for jury selection. The judge has a glass
eye; he seems to be looking at you even when he isn't -- an advantageous
disability, possibly, for a man in his line of work. He tells a joke about
Perry Mason -- my man! -- going to heaven, the punch line of which is that
all the judges are in hell. The attorneys, who as if by cosmic/comic
prearrangement are an Irishman and a Jew, likewise mock their trade, but
this is transparently tactical: You can love us, because we hate us
too.
Perry Mason has some
interesting things to say about this point in the judicial process:
The clerk calls out the name of a prospective juror. That person gets up from his seat in the courtroom, walks up to take his place in the jury box. You have an opportunity to watch him for six or seven seconds. In those six or seven seconds you have to reach a snap judgment as to his character . . . [A]s a rule a man has steeled himself by the time you start questioning him so his appearance is more or less of a mask. He's trying to convince you that he's intelligent and important . . . He's trying to convince himself he's something of a judge.
I try to convince myself that I'm intelligent and important and something of a judge. No luck. I could be wrong is practically my mantra. I am ever apt to believe the last person who speaks: I see your point. And now I see your point. That another person's fate might lie even fractionally in my hands fills me with dread; I don't want to judge, I don't, I don't, I don't. But in any case, a jury is seated without my ever being questioned, and I return to the assembly room with the other few unchosen, somewhat relieved but also strangely ashamed. Not being picked for the team in a game I didn't want to play in the first place -- this is like being back at school.
ANOTHER WEEK PASSES, and I continue a prisoner of the
system, phoning in obediently, anxiously, for my semidiurnal personal
verdict. I have finished The Case of the Vagabond Virgin -- which
never even goes to a jury, Perry having blown the whole business wide-open
during the preliminary hearing -- but I still can't work out exactly what
happened, even when he lays it out plain to Paul and Della. Justice
clearly is better off without me.
The night before the tenth, potentially last day of my servitude, I have a
dream. I dream I'm back in court, but a very grand, Pink Floyd at Madison
Square Garden sort of court. I'm sitting in bleachers along with scores of
fellow prospective jurors -- next to Charlotte from Sex and the
City, in fact, which is strange because I like Miranda best (the
lawyer, interestingly enough). The judge, who is seated about 30 feet
above the floor, is putting the voir dire on . . . a dog. And assigning
him not to a jury but to a movie, an alpine adventure of the White
Fang variety. "You'll be the star -- you think you can handle that?"
he says, indicating by his tone that Fido can and will. I myself am sent
to be an extra in something called The Teller. "You'll be out of
there in a day," says the bailiff
encouragingly.
I wake and, at the
appointed hour, make my final call. I am excused, by tape recording, and
go whistling off to lunch, a free man.
Illustration by Hadley Hooper