Juror #147

Today is one of my rare mid-day posts because I'm at Jury Duty today. Hooray for free Wi-fi!

Truth be told the setup here isn't too bad. If anyone has to do jury duty at the Central Justice Center in Santa Ana, CA, it's a nice setup. If you want to have internet connection on a laptop, I'd suggest getting here early to snag one of the workstations (it's a nice, relatively private desk with its own power outlet). You can also use one of the open tables but there aren't outlets nearby and you're out in the open. They even have "Quiet Rooms" for reading and an extensive magazine rack. Sure beats that big room with just a bunch of chairs back in New York.

I was picked for jury selection and they made a hundred of us go down to the courtroom. They did roll call and gave us numbers. I got 147. Then at 10:20am they gave us a 15 minute break. Which turned into an 80 minute break. At which time they made us file back in the courtroom to tell us to take a lunch break until 1:45pm, when they'd tell 63 of us to return for jury selection.

So right now we're all on lunch break and they're playing a movie, Invincible, but I've been too distracted by the guy next to me blathering on his cell phone: She's crazy dude, crazy...She doesn't stop calling, dude...she's like, how does that make you feel? How does that make you feel?...yeah, I was sober... And so on. Yeesh, I wish he would just shut up and share his darn French Fries with me already. sigh. I'm so hungry. I didn't pack enough lunch.

To be honest though, I can't say I'm trying to get out of jury duty. Given that we're not in a police state or dictorship, I'd like to think that if I were on trial that folks with an open mind and a voice of the people like me would be on my jury. The downside is that my employer doesn't pay for days off for jury duty. So I get to use my vacation days. But to be fair, I know I'm not the only one. That's justice, right?

Oooo, they're going to announce the list...