The Judicial System Nightmare

I spent Monday of this week frolicking in the hollows of the Atlanta judicial system performing my civic duty as a potential juror. And by frolicking I mean sitting in a barely cushioned, straight-backed chair in a huge, eerily quiet white room until my fanny and mind were equally numb. And I enjoyed that all the live-long day.

I understand that our Constitution guarantees potential wrongdoers and those who’ve been wronged the right to a fair trial in front of their peers. But you would think a country great enough to have churned out the iPhone, Scream Machine and the Big Mac would be clever and savvy enough to find a more efficient and expeditious method of executing this due process.

I arrived at 8:00 a.m. along with about 400 of my fellow compatriates, and by 10:00, all that had occurred in the two hours we’d been there was the showing of a flick about how jury duty works and how it should really be seen as a privilege, not a burden. I must say, if I’m being completely honest, that by the end of the movie, I still felt burdened. Granted, they were going to pay me a whopping $25 a day for my service but that just felt like a cheap buy off to win me over to the “privilege” side of the debate. It didn’t work.

The silence of the room was broken at last around 10:30 a.m. from a podium bearing a microphone, a la college classroom. (Correction—there had been previous audible revelations coming from said podium but they were limited to “Do not use your cell phones in this room!” admonitions; nothing exciting.) But at 10:30, the jury wrangler stood up and announced that she would be calling names that were members of the first set of potential jurors for a particular case.

The first thing I noticed was that she overused the word "Please." And I never thought you could overuse that particular word but I was wrong.

“Please listen for me to caw yo nammmmme please,” a lady of mature years bellowed so loudly that the microphone was merely overkill. “When you hear yo nammmmme, please, be sure to answer so I can hear you please.” And henceforth she proceeded to butcher every single name on the list. At last, some entertainment. It only took a few of these before it became apparent why her own volume level was a notch or ten too high: she had to be deaf as a doorknob. She’d stumble through a name and the owner would call the required “Here!” or “Yes!” A beat later, she’d hark out the same name again, to which another “Here!” would resound. Finally, the group of folks around the chosen one would all be yelling “He’s HERE—right HERE! He’s HERE!” until she finally heard them. At which point she’d utter into the microphone: “Well you have to speak up please or I can’t hear you please.” Speak up? If they yelled any louder, we’d be disrupting Alabama courtrooms.

She continued on this way for each set of 60 names on the lists. Occasionally we were even rewarded with an “Ah Lawd” as she gazed at the name before her with too many consonants and not enough vowels. By the end, I was disappointed when she broke down and started spelling some of the names. Quitter.

But while wildly entertaining, my name was never among those she called. (How could one mess up Megan Elizabeth Hicks? I couldn’t wait to find out and felt gypped that it never happened.)

By 11:00, she’d annihilated all the superior court jurors’ names that she needed. There were a few more rounds of state jurors called and then…nothing. Hmmm, now what? I’d never run into this situation before, having always been called before to at least go into a courtroom with 59 others and hear what wrongdoing someone was accused of...well...doing. An hour went by and she strolled to the pointless mic again. “I’m afraid I cannot let you go just yet please. The judges think they might still need some of you just in case. You’re free for an hour lunch and please report back here by 1:00. Please.”

Just in case? What’s worse that being a juror? A just in case juror. Even worse: the not-knowing exactly how long we’d have to continue sitting in that big, now fairly empty room before finally being called or set free. Reminds me of how I heard labor described before I experienced it myself: It’s not that contractions are so bad you cannot tolerate them. It’s the not knowing how long they will continue to hit you that is the mental killer.

From my past experiences with jury duty, I thought it stunk. But this sitting there, not even getting called into a courtroom to enjoy the legal banter and watch the accused squirm, this was torture. And besides, if I wasn’t ever called into a courtroom, how would I get the chance to provide the answers I’d drummed up to ensure no sane individual would want me on their jury?

“Am I married? Oh yes, I’m the fourth wife of my second cousin who is also the nephew of my great aunt Rosalee who always said… Oh, that’s enough? Ok.”

“What do I do for a living? I’m an artist. A sandwich artist. You want tomatoes on that?”

“Which one’s the guilty guy? Yeah, he looks guilty alright…”

Out at lunch I scarfed a sandwich and juiced up my phone in the car—stupid me didn’t bring a phone charger. Apparently I thought that court holding rooms were void of electrical outlets. And wifi. Didn’t bring a laptop but lots of other forward-thinking bastards had. Damn it.

Back at 1:00, we all trudged in and sat once more, waiting. 2:00 showed up but no more announcements did. About 2:30, the gal stepped to the podium that now mocked us and announced that she still couldn’t let us go because a judge said so. Apparently we might be needed still. Groans were heard like waves through the room. Didn’t they each have their 60 folks? If you can’t get 14 impartial people out of those, it seems like someone’s just being overly picky.

As the minutes ticked by, folks everywhere began assuming odd and awkward positions in the hopes of attaining comfort the chair-designers didn’t dream possible. After awhile, it looked like Jim Jones’s place. One clever guy arranged three chairs together in such a way that he could stretch out and fall asleep; thus adding snoring to the fun of the day for the rest of us. I worked from my phone as long as I could but just after 2:30, the battery went kaput and I was left with only my books and a continuous mental scroll of my To Do list that was only getting longer as I remembered more crap I needed to be doing if I were anywhere but a court-holding cell. And of course, I was pleading to God that this nightmare be over soon.

At 3:20, the voice of doom again came over the loudspeaker. We were being granted a 10 minute break but still couldn’t quite be released. Unbelievable. Absolutely unbelievable. She promised to check with the judge again in 15 minutes to see if anything had changed. Good, I thought, that usually works for my son on me: keep asking the same question every few minutes until you get the answer you want.

At 3:45, she at last gave us the nod to get the hell out of dodge. You’ve never seen folks rush an exit door the way we all did.

At least now I have the luxury of knowing I won’t be called again for another 18 months. Oh, and the $3/hour I earned for the “privilege.”