Jury Duty. *sigh*
Mar. 20th, 2007 08:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rdwaynewrightOh jury duty, what am I going to do with you?
Man, the waiting. GAH! I thought it was just answering some questions too. Nuh uh.
is just some questions asked for selection.
Anyway, so in Philly you come in and get in a long-ass line to check in your cell phone(s) and cameras. Then you get into another long-ass line for the metal detectors. Then you go to this big "holding pen" (my name for it) where hundreds of your fellow disgruntled citizens are desperately hoping that they're not selected to sit. They give you a survey to fill out with a bunch of legal questions, half of which leave half of the jurors mildy confuzzled and then you get a big yellow JUROR sticker for your shirt. And then you sit and wait. And wait. And wait.
After a while, you get bored and wander over to the free coffee, juice, and banana bread that they provide. The free food is quite nice of them, actually! And then you sit and wait some more.
Periodically, they call up panels of 40 random people, or sometimes 20 or 10. Each panel is assigned to a specific judge/case. The panels stay in the building for a major case or walk over to City Hall for a civil case. You shake yourself awake from your nap and hope that your name is called for one of the early panels so you can go somewhere other than the big boring holding pen. Of course your name isn't called, so then you go back to napping or reading. Whatever. You manage to get a lot of reading done. At least the chairs are pretty comfortable and you have leg room in the back wall row of seats.
FINALLY, after several hours your name is called along with your juror number! And then if you're unlucky, your courtroom isn't ready, so you sit and wait some more with the other 10, 20, or 40 people who've also been stuck sitting and waiting since 8:15 in the morning. At this point, it's like 11:00 am. Eventually, you all get to line up in pairs and they march you to the elevators because the escalator is broken. As you're leaving the holding pen, you snicker at the rest of the people in the holding pen whose names STILL haven't been called. They get to be bored in the same location even longer than you. After you exit the elevator, the court man tells you to line up by the windows because you can't go into the courtroom yet. So you all sit by the windows and wait.
After you've waited a bit, you go through the courtroom to a little back room- the jury is split into two groups by now- and you wait. And fall asleep. People are staring at other people because there's nothing to do. Someone sniffles, someone else yawns. Aaaaand you continue waiting. The judge comes in after a while and gives you a little speech about stuff and then leaves again because there's stuff going on in the court that you're not allowed to hear. And then you wait.
And wait.
And wait.
Yay! The court man guy comes back and you get to sit in the jury box and the viewing...pews?...in order of your juror number. I was number seven, so I got to sit in the box. At this point, you get another rousing speech from the judge, you get introduced to the attorneys, the court reporter, the court aid, the dude, the other dude, some other person, the sherriff, and the defendent. Then they tell you what the case is (bare bones facts only) and the names of the defendent and victim. The defendent's not allowed to speak when (s)he stands up so that the jurors can make sure they don't know him/her. The judge has to preserve his/her right to silence and all that. Somewhere in there is a quick break. After ALL of this, you break for lunch because it's just about twelve noon. So, it's taken four hours to actually get to a courtroom and you haven't even done the final jury selection yet. There are still 40 jurors!
Back from lunch (the judge gave us over an hour for lunch), you wait in the hallway again before being allowed to go back into the courtroom where you're taken back to the little rooms behind the courtroom. The wait is pretty short this time around. You go back out to your seats (by number) and the individual questioning begins. For 40 people. *headdesk* It takes YEARS. You're given a break when the judge gets to juror #23.
After all of this, both attornies (that looks like it's spelled wrong), and damn near all of the official courtroom people take a recess for a while. Everyone but the judge comes out one at a time. Finally the judge appears and reads the numbers of the fourteen jurors selected. You totally think you got off when they skip from juror 4 to juror 10, but then the judge is like, "Wait, you skipped number seven!" and your like "DAMN!" You're juror number 4 now. All of the selected people get up and go back to the little room where you're given instructions for the next day, passes to get in, and forbidden to speak about the case.
And then they let you go home. At 5:00pm. :-/
If you're sitting in the "holding pen" and you get on an early panel and aren't selected, you have to come back down to the "holding pen" and wait to get placed on another panel. XD It's that one day or one trial business. If you go early and get dismissed from a panel, you still haven't been there for one whole business day, so you get to wait some more and go again until you either get on a trial or have been there a whole day.
Man, the waiting. GAH! I thought it was just answering some questions too. Nuh uh.
is just some questions asked for selection.
Anyway, so in Philly you come in and get in a long-ass line to check in your cell phone(s) and cameras. Then you get into another long-ass line for the metal detectors. Then you go to this big "holding pen" (my name for it) where hundreds of your fellow disgruntled citizens are desperately hoping that they're not selected to sit. They give you a survey to fill out with a bunch of legal questions, half of which leave half of the jurors mildy confuzzled and then you get a big yellow JUROR sticker for your shirt. And then you sit and wait. And wait. And wait.
After a while, you get bored and wander over to the free coffee, juice, and banana bread that they provide. The free food is quite nice of them, actually! And then you sit and wait some more.
Periodically, they call up panels of 40 random people, or sometimes 20 or 10. Each panel is assigned to a specific judge/case. The panels stay in the building for a major case or walk over to City Hall for a civil case. You shake yourself awake from your nap and hope that your name is called for one of the early panels so you can go somewhere other than the big boring holding pen. Of course your name isn't called, so then you go back to napping or reading. Whatever. You manage to get a lot of reading done. At least the chairs are pretty comfortable and you have leg room in the back wall row of seats.
FINALLY, after several hours your name is called along with your juror number! And then if you're unlucky, your courtroom isn't ready, so you sit and wait some more with the other 10, 20, or 40 people who've also been stuck sitting and waiting since 8:15 in the morning. At this point, it's like 11:00 am. Eventually, you all get to line up in pairs and they march you to the elevators because the escalator is broken. As you're leaving the holding pen, you snicker at the rest of the people in the holding pen whose names STILL haven't been called. They get to be bored in the same location even longer than you. After you exit the elevator, the court man tells you to line up by the windows because you can't go into the courtroom yet. So you all sit by the windows and wait.
After you've waited a bit, you go through the courtroom to a little back room- the jury is split into two groups by now- and you wait. And fall asleep. People are staring at other people because there's nothing to do. Someone sniffles, someone else yawns. Aaaaand you continue waiting. The judge comes in after a while and gives you a little speech about stuff and then leaves again because there's stuff going on in the court that you're not allowed to hear. And then you wait.
And wait.
And wait.
Yay! The court man guy comes back and you get to sit in the jury box and the viewing...pews?...in order of your juror number. I was number seven, so I got to sit in the box. At this point, you get another rousing speech from the judge, you get introduced to the attorneys, the court reporter, the court aid, the dude, the other dude, some other person, the sherriff, and the defendent. Then they tell you what the case is (bare bones facts only) and the names of the defendent and victim. The defendent's not allowed to speak when (s)he stands up so that the jurors can make sure they don't know him/her. The judge has to preserve his/her right to silence and all that. Somewhere in there is a quick break. After ALL of this, you break for lunch because it's just about twelve noon. So, it's taken four hours to actually get to a courtroom and you haven't even done the final jury selection yet. There are still 40 jurors!
Back from lunch (the judge gave us over an hour for lunch), you wait in the hallway again before being allowed to go back into the courtroom where you're taken back to the little rooms behind the courtroom. The wait is pretty short this time around. You go back out to your seats (by number) and the individual questioning begins. For 40 people. *headdesk* It takes YEARS. You're given a break when the judge gets to juror #23.
After all of this, both attornies (that looks like it's spelled wrong), and damn near all of the official courtroom people take a recess for a while. Everyone but the judge comes out one at a time. Finally the judge appears and reads the numbers of the fourteen jurors selected. You totally think you got off when they skip from juror 4 to juror 10, but then the judge is like, "Wait, you skipped number seven!" and your like "DAMN!" You're juror number 4 now. All of the selected people get up and go back to the little room where you're given instructions for the next day, passes to get in, and forbidden to speak about the case.
And then they let you go home. At 5:00pm. :-/
If you're sitting in the "holding pen" and you get on an early panel and aren't selected, you have to come back down to the "holding pen" and wait to get placed on another panel. XD It's that one day or one trial business. If you go early and get dismissed from a panel, you still haven't been there for one whole business day, so you get to wait some more and go again until you either get on a trial or have been there a whole day.
