This Post Will Probably Get Me Smited

At the beginning of August I received my first jury summons in the mail. It came over a month before the day I was due to arrive in the courthouse, so I tossed it aside and let it sit for five weeks collecting dust on the corner of my desk. As the date approached, though, panic set in. Friends I didn't even know I had emerged from oblivion to tell me their jury duty horror stories. One was sequestered overnight. One sat on a murder trial that lasted six weeks.

I was doomed. My only shot at freedom was to pull a Liz Lemon:

I texted several friends about my predicament. One suggested I "use Liz Lemon's way of getting out of it." Another wrote "I don't think it's fair for you to be on jury duty because you're a hologram." (I'll have it known that I suggested this very approach to my dad when he was summoned several months ago and he didn't even consider it. Rude. Also, thank God I have friends who get me!)

My mother was also a huge help.

Me: What if I wear like nine different prints?

Mom: And twitch.

Me: What should I wear? I need something that says "I'm crazy, but not so crazy that I'm embarrassed to walk around in this."

Mom: I don't think you can accomplish both.

Me: What if I showed up in a bathing suit and snorkel mask? And my polka-dotted rain boots! Or high heels!

Mom: Go with the rain boots. 

Me: Is it too late for me to have Lynn (my doctor) write a note saying I'm schizophrenic?

Mom: You'd have to convince her first.

Me: But I hear voices!

Finally the Day of Duty arrived. It began as no day should ever begin: at the unholy hour of 5:00 am. I ate breakfast, made lunch, showered, decided against the bathing suit/snorkel mask/rain boots ensemble, practiced my "Excuse me, Imperial Guard?" intonations, and headed to the bus stop.

I arrived at the King County Superior Court in Seattle at about 7:45. After I passed through security I got in line at the Information Desk to ask the whereabouts of the Juror Assembly Room (JAR). The woman in front of me had asked the same thing and when it was my turn I pointed down the hall and said, "I'll just follow her." She slowed down so I could catch up. "Do you not want to be here either?" I asked, and she thrashed her head from side to side, her eyes wide.

We made our way to the JAR where we handed our dinky paper badges to the lady at the desk who scanned them and told us to pick up an information pamphlet and have a seat. The JAR was long and narrow with about 25 rows of ten seats extending back into the bowels of the courthouse. The chairs all faced forward toward a podium and there were TVs mounted on the wall every three or four rows. After I read through the hot pink juror information sheet I wedged my NPR tote bag (which I had taken to make myself look smart so they wouldn't pick me) between my legs and the armrest and pulled out my book (which I had taken to make myself look smart so they wouldn't pick me).

At 8:15, without a word from anyone with authority, the lights went out and a video started. A grainy image of the Constitution served as a backdrop, and as the camera zoomed in to highlight the words, a very slow, deliberate female voice declared "We the People" as though she were being scored on enthusiasm. I laughed and then promptly shut up when I realized that in a room of 250 people I was the only one who found it entertaining.

The video, which lasted roughly ten minutes, covered all the details of how we were chosen for the jury pool and the entire procedure of whittling down hundreds of people to get the final twelve jurors. When the video ended we had a short break and the judge approached the podium and covered all the details of how we were chosen for the jury pool and the entire process of whittling down hundreds of people to get the final twelve jurors. (What she discussed was almost literally word-for-word what was said in the video, so, you know, that was necessary.) Partway through her speech an elderly man toward the front of the room raised his hand and shouted "I can't hear you!" The judge adjusted the microphone and promised to speak up. She then launched into a lecture on the history of juries, which date all the way back to ancient Greece and "a play by Sophocles about a jury." At the end of her spiel she told us, "I can find out the name of that play by Sophocles if anyone's interested." First of all, don't everyone rush up at once. Secondly, Your Honor, maybe you should learn your Greek playwrights before launching into an oration on literary history. The play is actually a trilogy by Aeschylus, not Sophocles, and it's called Oresteia. (And while we're at it, it's Pike Place Market, not Pikes Place Market. You live in Seattle, for God's sake.)

We were then introduced to the bailiff, a fast-talking woman with a short, frizzy brown triangle of hair that fanned out midway down her ears and narrowed to a point at the top of her head. A minute into her talk the same elderly man raised his head and once again shouted "I can't hear you!" I decided then and there that I would like to adopt him as my grandfather.

Then came the important stuff. "Most trials run for about a week and a half," the bailiff told us, "but your trial is special." I shrank into my chair, knowing full well that in this context "special" was not the same word spelled out in daisies and teddy bears on stickers at the top of my first-grade homework assignments. "As you all know," the bailiff continued, "today is Friday. Normally we do not have sessions on Fridays. We only have sessions on Fridays for two reasons: One, it's a high-profile case." Shit, I thought, I'm going to be looking at positive rape kit results and photos of dead babies and bloody, mangled limbs. "Two," she said, "it's a long case. Now, I already said that normally trials run a week and a half." I held my breath. "This trial will run through the end of the year." A collective groan swept across the room. "So let me get this straight," whispered a man in the row beside me. "If I refuse jury duty, the amount of time I spend in jail will be less than the amount of time I would have to spend on the jury."

Because not all of the 1,000 potential jurors summoned to the courtroom last week would be able to serve from 9:00am to 4:30pm, Monday - Thursday, for ELEVEN EFFING WEEKS, we each received Undue Hardship forms to fill out in case sitting in a courtroom for the rest of 2012 would put a significant damper on our lives. (Side note: Is it not alarming that there are people for whom this would not cause undue hardship? This perplexes me.) The bailiff had told us to be specific in our responses so I laughed when I received my form and saw that they had provided only five lines spanning half the width of the paper. In college, "be specific" meant a seven-page paper. In my most compact handwriting I began to explain that I had plans to fly to New York at the end of this month to visit my 90-year-old grandmother (this is actually true, so if I have to go back on Tuesday that judge is heartless). I still had another reason for dismissal but I had run out of room on the form. I leaned over to the woman next to me--the one I had followed to the JAR--and asked, "Do you think we can write on the back of this?" She raised an eyebrow. "Are you writing an essay?"

I turned in my form and sat through yet another talk on when and where to find out if we had to go back on Tuesday, which included the same elderly man raising his hand and shouting, "Last time they rejected me!" which was by far the highlight of my King County Superior Court experience. After seven people had all asked when the trial would start, we were free to go.

And now I wait.