So I deposited the check

So I deposited the check I got from the state for my jury duty last month. It was a nice little eighty dollar surprise for a day and a half of nothing more than watching a video, reading a book and answering 24 extremely personal questions in front of 75 people. I had almost forgotten about it completely when that check came in (and in a very official envelope from the state, I thought I was in real trouble when I first saw it).
The experience wasn’t much. I was subjected to a video of Ed Bradley telling me how serving on a jury wasn’t just a civic duty of mine, but it was also a civic honor, which could only score an eye roll from me. I can handle jury duty, it’s just when I’m being patronized that I get irritated.
So as I noted, it ended after I went up to the courtroom and answered a bunch of questions about myself to first the presiding judge, and then the two attorneys in the case. It was a case about a guy who got nailed on Interstate 87 with 10 pounds of marijuana in his car. Police here have been pretty rough on the Interstate recently, since my exit is no more than 75 miles from the border. But I digress.
New York State’s a no exemption state, meaning that there are no automatic exemptions from jury duty, unlike other states where I’ve lived, so apparently private attorneys, police officers, prosecutors, convicted felons and even judges may be called on occasion to serve on a jury, but as I was sitting in the box answering questions about myself, I couldn’t help but wonder if de facto exemptions still exist.
The judge asked me about my attending law school, and my work for a judge, and about the criminal cases that the judge oversaw, and I realized quickly while I was answering those questions that there was no way that either of those two attorneys would want me on that jury. While none of the questions were especially probing or personal, there would have been too many risks they couldn’t have accounted for by having me in there, and this wasn’t because my situation was unusual; the same could be said about anyone who had gone to law school.
So when the attorneys came back after spending some time with the judge in the judge’s chambers, I was told I could go home and that my jury duty had been fulfilled. I had not been selected for the jury. So off I went, eighty dollars richer for having spent two days hanging around the Essex County courthouse.
But I have to wonder if the no-exemption rule was just in place to give the appearance of equity that simply doesn’t exist. Two answers for two questions from me and I’ll never see the inside of a jury room. The same probably could be said about the convicted felon down the row from me, who was also dismissed (from answers to different questions, of course :p). So was this nothing more than an elaborate waste of everyone’s time just to give the public the incorrect impression that “no one is exempt from jury service”?
I’ll have to write my senator.
But there was another interesting thing that I noticed during my brief stay. As all 180 of us prospective jurors sat in our waiting room, I overheard plenty of grousing about having to come in for the service. But upon the judge asking us questions about ourselves, not one of us took the easy opportunity to get out of it. Here’s the example for me, which did not differ in any practical sense from anyone else examined as I was there:
The template questions asked me if I had any members of my family or close friends who worked in law enforcement. I have a cousin who works as a deputy for a sheriff in Arizona, and another who is an FBI agent (who actually spent time busting large scale marijuana producers, but I was not asked about that specifically) and told this to the judge. He asked me if I felt that my relationship to either of my cousins might affect my ability to fairly consider the case of the guy busted with pot in his car. I could have said “yes”, of course. Hell, everyone there who had a family member or friend in law enforcement could have said yes to this question, and been assured an easy one way ticket out of the process. But none of us did. Not one.
I guess Ed Bradley and his “civic honor” really got to us.
Next week I plan to volunteer to help out at the Lake Placid Film Festival. Martin Scorsese’s going to be coming this year, so it looks like quite an event.