I was selected to do my civic duty the other, day so I dutifully journeyed to the county seat to participate in the process. Here in California, jury duty is discharged if you serve a minimum of one day or one trial. You call in or check the website during the week you are on-call and if your group is called, in you go.
Finding the place was easy and parking was copious and free. I did find it mildly amusing that the center was called the Hall of Justice. It hearkened back to Saturday morning Superfriends cartoons. But I digress.
Anyway, they call over 200 people per day and it took a while to check everyone in. I thought it odd that after signing in, we had to answer a lot of questions that could have/or was answered on the jury summons form. Nonetheless, we then had just over 30 minutes of orientation before the wait set in. The docket had 86 cases requesting a jury trial so the odds were good that some of us were going to be called to serve.
It wasn't so bad in the morning. There was WiFi so I could work and TV, for those that didn't. There was also a cafeteria on site if you got hungry. There certainly are worse places to spend the day. Two groups were called in the morning, though I wasn't included on either. Lunch came and went and the number of cases requesting a jury had dropped to 23. By mid-afternoon, I was starting to go stir crazy. By the afternoon break, the magic number was 9. Just after 4PM, we were dismissed to the collective relief of everyone there.
It was a very long day, but I suppose it's a small price to pay for keeping our system of justice going. Good or bad, this been going for a long time and it's done a lot of good. I guess that's worth a day of my time. :-)
Finding the place was easy and parking was copious and free. I did find it mildly amusing that the center was called the Hall of Justice. It hearkened back to Saturday morning Superfriends cartoons. But I digress.
Anyway, they call over 200 people per day and it took a while to check everyone in. I thought it odd that after signing in, we had to answer a lot of questions that could have/or was answered on the jury summons form. Nonetheless, we then had just over 30 minutes of orientation before the wait set in. The docket had 86 cases requesting a jury trial so the odds were good that some of us were going to be called to serve.
It wasn't so bad in the morning. There was WiFi so I could work and TV, for those that didn't. There was also a cafeteria on site if you got hungry. There certainly are worse places to spend the day. Two groups were called in the morning, though I wasn't included on either. Lunch came and went and the number of cases requesting a jury had dropped to 23. By mid-afternoon, I was starting to go stir crazy. By the afternoon break, the magic number was 9. Just after 4PM, we were dismissed to the collective relief of everyone there.
It was a very long day, but I suppose it's a small price to pay for keeping our system of justice going. Good or bad, this been going for a long time and it's done a lot of good. I guess that's worth a day of my time. :-)
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