Ain't No Swimming in the Jury Pool

My Official Trial Juror's Handbook for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, which I received not once but twice, had a number of interesting and informative sections. There were directions to the courthouse, instructions on when to appear and what to bring with me. There were subsections on conduct, appropriate dress, and qualifications. But my favorite part by far was the section entitled, "Being a Juror is Hard. What if I am not smart enough to be a Juror?" I called up at least three separate friends to read them this hilarious section.



"Dude, listen to this," I said, reading. "'Being a juror is very difficult. What if I am not smart enough to be a good juror? Answer: It is wrong to think that an individual who is highly educated is better equipped to determine which witnesses are telling the truth and which are not telling the truth' ... in other words, it's okay if I'm a total dumbass."



More than one of my friends suggested that this was probably a good thing. And we laughed and we laughed and we laughed.



When I got down to the John W. McCormack Post Office and Courthouse and couldn't find the door, I started to wonder if maybe the Handbook did apply to me ... and was wrong about the IQ needed in order to be a good juror.



The Courthouse takes up a city block in Post Office Square. It sits between Devonshire Street, its official address, and Congress Street, and is flanked by Milk and Waters Streets. It has a number of doors, according to the map, and my Handbook assured me that the ones I wanted were either at Congress or Milk Streets. The Handbook made it sound like they would be easy to find. The Handbook lied.



Or at least, misled me strongly. There were a number of doors. They were all either blocked off completely or restricted to Courthouse personnel. Many of them also featured a cheery blue sign telling me that the juror's entrance was right around the next corner. I started to wonder if I was being filmed.



On my second lap of the building, in which I had resorted to running the toe of my sandal around the foundation like a blind person who had misplaced her cane, I found another juror who directed me to the correct entrance. I knew she was a juror because she looked annoyed as fuck, she was clearly more dressed up than usual, and she was smoking. (Have you heard that people in Boston are quitting smoking? After serving jury duty, I don't believe it.)



"Where's the door?" I gasped, nearly body-checking her as she attempted to run to minimum safe distance for her smoke.



"Round the corner," she said. "Move."



Once I got in, I had to endure a cavity search. Okay, not really. I just had to walk through a metal detector. Unfortunately, I seem to wear a lot of metal. I don't think of myself as a metal-wearing person, but apparently I am. My jacket had all these little hook closures, so I had to take that off. It promptly got stuck on the conveyor belt of the X-ray machine, behind the rubber flaps that keep in terrorist threats such as sweaters and light-weight handbags.



"Can I reach in and grab my jacket?" I asked the attendant. He looked at me like I'd just started babbling at him in Swahili.



"Cawse ya can, sweethahdt," he said. I realized, with my 'burby little accent, that I actually was speaking Swahili. I have this weird thing where whenever I hear a really strong Boston accent, I feel a little homesick, even though I've lived here most of my life. I kind of wish my accent were stronger. Lately, people keep asking me if I'm from Connecticut, and while there's nothing wrong with Connecticut, I don't want folks to start assuming that I'm a Yankees fan.



The courthouse staff was really friendly, directing me up the stairs to the jury pool, smiling as they indicated where to put my Questionnaire, joking around as I asked if there was a lady's room, and if so, if I was allowed to use it at that particular moment.



"Cawse ya can, sweethahdt," said the court officer. That was their answer to everything. I was really tempted to ask them if I could, I don't know, walk down a flight and get a good look at the defendants to see if they looked guilty, or if I could smoke crack, or something.



The room we were in reminded me of a lecture hall at UMass Amherst, where I went to school. Only slightly more comfortable. It consisted of about 300 dark blue upholstered chairs arranged in banks, facing a small podium and three ceiling-mounted TVs. A row of long metal coat-racks lined the front of the room, with hangers that you couldn't remove, just like in a hotel. The hangers reminded me of the whole experience, actually: They were going to try to make the whole situation as easy on you as possible, but it was going to take awhile, so you might want to take off your coat, and just so you didn't get any funny ideas, the hangers weren't removable. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts Judicial System: Keeping Honest People Honest since ... whenever all that started. Ah-hem.



There was a desk up front, by the wide double doors, for the court officers. There were at least two of them there at all times, rifling through papers and sorting cards into bins and passing out slips indicating which panel you were on. Behind them were a copy machine and a defibrillator. The defibrillator made me wonder if I might have a heart attack at some point during the day, as those types of machines always do. (Oddly, the copy machine did not make me wonder if I might need to make copies.)



I got my slip from the (friendly! friendly!) court officer. I was panel 5, number 7, whatever that meant. I made my way into the room, which was already pretty full at 8:00, showing that my fellow citizens were just as nervous about being arrested for failing to appear as I was. Or, you know, serious about doing their civic duty. One or the other.



I found a seat, as far away from my nearest neighbors as possible, and opened my book and started reading.



At 8:08, people started coughing.



Coughing, even the kind that's caused by a dry tickle and not a germ, is contagious. And I am, as you may have gleaned from my earlier statement about the defibrillator, a miserable hypochondriac. I covered my nose surreptiously, and hoped I didn't look too much like Howard Hughes.



At 8:10, the sneezing began and I was sure that they would have to use the defibrillator on me after all.



At 8:12, I spotted a sign asking me to turn my cell phone off, and I did so. Since my compulsive nature precludes wearing a watch -- "What time is it? I'll just check. Wait, what time is it now? I'll just check." -- I no longer had any idea of what time it was after that point. As a result, I was plunged into something resembling one of those sensory deprivation experiments in psychology labs. What time was it? It could have been 9 o'clock or six the next morning.



At whatever time it was, but probably not much after 9:00, the court officers called us up to fill out yet another questionnaire. This one pertained to our racial status. I checked "Big Ol' Honky" and dropped the slip in the box.



Our previous questionnaire wasn't much more complicated. They just wanted to know if we had any prior experiences with the judicial system which might prejudice us against a defendant. Had we ever been involved in a criminal or civil trial? I started to check "No" and then realized that I had. In the box provided, I wrote, "I'm not sure if this counts, but had to take out a restraining order against an ex-boyfriend in 1996." I paused. 1996? Was that possible? How was I old enough to have an eight-year-old restraining order? My, how time flies.



Seated back at my chair, I started trying to arrange myself comfortably. This was not as easy as it seemed at first. I'm short. My legs don't really reach the ground in most chairs, not with a comfortable amount of knee bend, especially when I'm reading. But I'm pretty flexible, so I like to fold my legs, Indian-style, and sit that way. Unfortunately, that wasn't not really possible in those particular chairs, because of the armrests. Also, what to do with my purse? It was a dilemma, as I'd brought a good book with me and you could probably steal my pants right off my body when I'm reading a good book and I'd never notice. I could have put it on my lap, but then it would be tough to balance my book on the clasp. I could have put it on the floor, but see previous statement re: pants, reading, etc. I finally opted for that, figuring that you'd need some kind of balls to swipe someone's purse at the Courthouse. In fact, it occurred to me that I was pretty safe in this room altogether. I knew for sure that no one in the room has a weapon, since we'd all been X-rayed. How often can you say that in a large urban gathering?



Unfortunately, X-ray machines don't pick up weird. I managed to avoid any weirdos until after the 10:00 break, but as soon as we got back and settled in, he sat next to me. Greasy hair, permanent slump, patchy facial hair, pants held together with safety pins. I had to look twice to make sure I'd never dated him. Something about the way he was sitting seemed both standoffish and encroaching on my space. He had his knees splayed out, like guys do on the train, as if to say, "My package is too large to be confined by my own legs! I'm going to need your chair, too. Sorry." He hid his face in his hands like he was weeping. He hid it so thoroughly, that I had a weird flash-thought of him looking up and not having a face at all: just a circle of teeth like a moray eel. After awhile, I realized that he was weeping at all, nor expressing physically some larger depression. I realized this, because he started to snore slightly, and began leaning in toward my shoulder as if to curl up against me.



Then I got, suddenly, who he reminded me of. I'd been thinking it was an ex-boyfriend. But all along it was the stray Siamese cat who prowls around my parent's yard, killing my Dad's birds. I made the mistake of petting this cat once, and got actual fleas for my trouble. ("Who's a sweet little kitty? Who's a sweet little kitty? What's the matter, sweetie? Are you itchy? Are you a scratchy old -- oh my GOD, is that a FUCKING FLEA?")



I got up and moved before his greasy head could make contact with my shoulder.



As soon as I settled into my new spot, the court officers announced that no jury would be impaneled today, and we could leave. The woman next to me shot her fist in the air and yelled, "YES!" Like she'd just won a hand at video poker. And then we all got up and shuffled out of the room.



On my way out, I paused before the pictures of Dubya and Cheney in the lobby. Dubya's picture looked oddly airbrushed, especially his eyes. I wondered if some artist had tried to take down his squint. He looked weirdly 3D, like the picture of Jesus that hung in my sister's childhood friend's house. The 3D Jesus hung in the hallway in her friend's house when she was growing up. You'd walk one way, and he'd look sad and disappointed. You'd walk the other way, and he'd look benign and forgiving. "You're in the kitchen! You're damned! You're in the living room! You're saved!"



Even with that, he still looked like a bully. But not as bad as Cheney. Mouth drooping like a stroke victim, he smirked out of his portrait in three-quarter profile, looking at the camera jeeringly, as if to say, "I've got your country. What the fuck are you going to do about it?"



Out loud, I said, "I'm going to vote your fucking ass out of office, that's what." And then I looked around, to see if anyone had heard. I talk to myself more and more. It's a problem.



The best part of the Dubya/Cheney portraits? Between them, hanging on the wall, was a copy of something called "Rules of Fair Conduct." I love obvious irony.