civic duty my ass

a whole bunch of hurry up and wait yesterday…

…a whole bunch.

you show up, make it through security (small down cops still let you make jokes about grenades and such when they know you) and then you hit the hall…to wait. then they usher you into a court room…to wait for a clerk. then she takes roll, which seems pointless as we all handed in our cards as we walked into the court room – there was no escape route.

and it’s not like anybody went in without handing her card, ’cause that would mean they were there just for shits and giggles – and ain’t nobody THAT fucking psycho, right?

so then they get you in the court room, call roll, and then usher you back out in the hallway…to wait some more. then you’re brought in to the court room with the lawyers, judge, and defendant, and they play musical jurors while they organize you in a way so they kind of funnel the people they know they probably don’t want into certain areas.

they tell you this AFTER you’re seated – and i was not in one of the “we don’t want you” areas, so i had some work to do.

the case involved drugs, so they asked all kinds of questions about the drug use and/or convictions of friends and family, and what those charges might be. when i started in on THAT list of associations i was told, point blank, that i was no longer in the running.

ah, damn.

but i was also told i was stuck till the bitter end. they weren’t bullshitting. i had been warned about this – JAB got called in on a case his wife actually worked on, it was discovered early, and he still had to sit there for the day. so i knew i was fucked. we sat through all the prosecution stuff, then a brief lunch break, and then the defense got their time. then we were sent out into the hall for “fifteen to twenty minutes”, which turned out to be an hour or so, but then we were brought back in and released save for thirteen of us…

…i was not part of the lucky thirteen. and this was all before 2:30 in the afternoon.

still not worth the fucking six bucks. hopefully that’ll be it for a year or two.

interesting side note – while i was bored shitless in the “justice center” JAB’s wife, who has worked on almost every case in our county, got a jury summons in the mail and will now go through all the same bullshit, even though the judge will call her out by name in the first five minutes and just tell her to chill – so don’t think anybody gets excluded from this bullshit!