Monday, May 10, 2004
Jury Duty -- Good Thing, Bad Thing
Last Cinco de Mayo, I spent my day in court. Or, more properly, in the waiting room of the county courthouse. Waiting and waiting and waiting. From 7:30 in the morning until 4:10 in the afternoon, doing absolutely nothing.
Now, don't get me wrong. I think jury duty is a good thing; a chance to take part in the administration of justice (and, in the case of certain laws, to bring the whole concept of Jury Nullification to light).
However, while the system is greatly improved over the past (when "jury duty" meant being bored shitless in that room for ten days instead of just one) it's still got a long way to go.
They called at least 8 jury panels while I was there, and my name came up not once. And there were only two interesting magazines in the room, and a hundred and fifty really boring people.
Seems to me, they could make this whole system better by adopting the Cheesecake Factory method.
The Cheesecake Factory is an insanely popular (for good reason) restaurant here in California, and since several of their restaurants are in touristically interesting locations, they've adopted a novel approach to the waiting list. You add your name, they give you a beeper. Then, you're free to wander at will until you're paged to alert you to a free table.
And, since the courthouse I got nailed with, Downtown LA, is right in the middle of an assload of interesting stuff, I think they've got to adopt this method to make the experience less heinous and, by extension, to make the jurors less hostile.
After all, had I been called onto any case after hours of mind-numbing waiting, I would have been inclined to vote a big "Fuck You" to the prosecutors, just because they're most associated with the people who'd been keeping me bored out of my skull. But... if I had gotten to spend that time seeing the sights downtown (instead of just the 90 minutes I had at lunch), I think I would have been a much more impartial juror.
Still a moot point, since I managed to dodge the bullet long enough to extinguish my jury duty for a year in one day. But... this is a system that has to catch up with the times. Recent improvements have only brought the experience up to about 1991. A simple infusion of technology could bring it up to modern times.
And they don't even have to invest in the beepers. Hell, just make it a requirement for jury duty that you have a cellphone, then they zap you a text message when your name comes up.
On the bright side, I did get to take the subway downtown, something I love to do; and I also finally got to see the Disney Concert Hall in person and realize that it isn't the ugly piece of crap photos make it appear to be. Nah; it's the Sydney Opera House of the American Southwest.
On the other hand, the new Cathedral should be dynamited into dust as soon as possible. That building is just as ugly as the sould of every child-molesting priest on the planet...
Now, don't get me wrong. I think jury duty is a good thing; a chance to take part in the administration of justice (and, in the case of certain laws, to bring the whole concept of Jury Nullification to light).
However, while the system is greatly improved over the past (when "jury duty" meant being bored shitless in that room for ten days instead of just one) it's still got a long way to go.
They called at least 8 jury panels while I was there, and my name came up not once. And there were only two interesting magazines in the room, and a hundred and fifty really boring people.
Seems to me, they could make this whole system better by adopting the Cheesecake Factory method.
The Cheesecake Factory is an insanely popular (for good reason) restaurant here in California, and since several of their restaurants are in touristically interesting locations, they've adopted a novel approach to the waiting list. You add your name, they give you a beeper. Then, you're free to wander at will until you're paged to alert you to a free table.
And, since the courthouse I got nailed with, Downtown LA, is right in the middle of an assload of interesting stuff, I think they've got to adopt this method to make the experience less heinous and, by extension, to make the jurors less hostile.
After all, had I been called onto any case after hours of mind-numbing waiting, I would have been inclined to vote a big "Fuck You" to the prosecutors, just because they're most associated with the people who'd been keeping me bored out of my skull. But... if I had gotten to spend that time seeing the sights downtown (instead of just the 90 minutes I had at lunch), I think I would have been a much more impartial juror.
Still a moot point, since I managed to dodge the bullet long enough to extinguish my jury duty for a year in one day. But... this is a system that has to catch up with the times. Recent improvements have only brought the experience up to about 1991. A simple infusion of technology could bring it up to modern times.
And they don't even have to invest in the beepers. Hell, just make it a requirement for jury duty that you have a cellphone, then they zap you a text message when your name comes up.
On the bright side, I did get to take the subway downtown, something I love to do; and I also finally got to see the Disney Concert Hall in person and realize that it isn't the ugly piece of crap photos make it appear to be. Nah; it's the Sydney Opera House of the American Southwest.
On the other hand, the new Cathedral should be dynamited into dust as soon as possible. That building is just as ugly as the sould of every child-molesting priest on the planet...
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