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from the government-of,-by,-and-for-the-people-on-its-deathbed dept.
I've previously mentioned federal whistleblower Peter Van Buren here and his expose on working for minimum wage at a store he called "Bullseye" while his lawsuit wound its way through the court system.
He has now blogged about a part of government which, apparently, hasn't had any new ideas since 1856.
I just wrapped up a couple of days of jury duty.
Note "jury duty", which is very different than serving on a jury. I didn't do that. Being on an actual jury involves making a careful judgment on someone's life. I did jury duty, which involves waiting and sitting and waiting, while watching your last hopeful images of democracy fade away.
[...] It was about 10:30 before a guy who said he'd been doing this exact same job for 34 years began speaking to us as if we were slow children or fairly smart puppies. The bulk of his explanation was about how most of us would get our $40 a day jury payment, and the many exceptions to that. It was then lunch.
[After lunch, we waited for the rest of the day but] were unneeded. We were dismissed until re-summoned tomorrow morning.
[...] The next morning, [...] I got called to jury selection, along with about 20 [others who had been waiting in the same semi-air-conditioned room]. We were brought to an unventilated hallway to wait for 30 minutes before entering an actual courtroom. [...] We did an olde timey swearing in, and then were invited to visit the judge and explain any "issues" we might have that would prevent us from serving on a jury.
It was pathetic. Nearly everyone bitched, whined, begged, and complained that they could not do it.
[...] I got bounced out of the jury selection in the next phase. Both the prosecutor and the defense attorney asked us questions about our jobs, our thoughts on law enforcement (especially if we trusted police to testify honestly), and the like. I answered every question completely candidly and was thrown back to wait three more hours until "jury duty" was over. The only way I could have served would have been to lie.
[...] This system is a mess. [...] The 19th century notion that everyone simply must find a way to put their life on hold does not work. [...] Telling single parents to just figure out child care, Wall Street brokers to just not care about millions of dollars, students to just miss class, and people who work freelance or hourly to just suck it up and lose their already limited income is not 2016.
If assigned to an actual jury, you stay with the trial until it is done. [...] If you pull a murder case or one of the many medical malpractice suits, it could be a month+. [...] For $40 a day [...]--minus the minimum five dollars [that] commuting to court and back costs, means you are getting about half the minimum wage in New York, and even that takes six to eight weeks to be sent to you. [...] If you are already living on the margins, you cannot afford to serve on a jury.
[...] A lot of folks whose English was poor or who sounded as if they did not get much of an education had no excuse the judge would accept [to be dismissed].
[...] My limited window into all of this suggests juries might just be made up of people who can't get out of it. Hard to say how bitter that makes them feel listening to an actual case.
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Sunday August 21 2016, @03:57PM
It is only a couple of days
It is not necessarily "only a couple of days." That depends on the your state/municipality (some places only make you report one day; others each day for a week), and if you are chosen to serve, the specific trial you are chosen for (which could last a day or months).
No, it is not fun, and usually not a well run process, but it is what is required to insure that the civil and criminal court systems remains fair.
Precisely why is it "required to insure that the civil and criminal court systems remain fair" that we have what is "usually not a well-run process"??
I agree that some of the author's complaints are a bit of whining. (And he actually demonstrates that he's a jerk when the first day someone hogs the wireless bandwidth by streaming a movie, so the second day the author decides to torrent a bunch of stuff for no apparent reason -- likely messing up a bunch of other people's experience.)
On the other hand, there are a bunch of legitimate complaints interspersed in the article. For example, he says that there was a great deal of confusion about which courthouse to show up to, and many people didn't figure it out until they spent 45 minutes standing in a security line (and then had to go to another building). That sounds like something that could be resolved relatively easily with signs and/or a clear notice on the jury summons.
There are all sorts of things like this that make the jury duty system "usually not a well-run process," and many of them could be improved with just a little thought, or even just a realization that there might be other ways to do stuff. I've lived in a place where things were very organized in terms of whether you had to show up -- you called on the day before you were supposed to report, and an automated message told you whether your group needed to show. If the case load was low for the week, they'd just tell you that your group was excused completely. In contrast, I also lived in a place where you were expected to show up every day for a week and just sit there and wait to see if they needed you. Why?? Jury summons tend to be sent out a month or two in advance (if not more), so how could they be expected to determine the right number of jurors needed that far in advance? Is it that hard to take 2 minutes every day to record an automated message which could save hundreds of prospective jurors from missing work and showing up on a given day for no reason??
Also, the author is simply reporting the fact that the vast majority of people seem to have excuses trying to get out of serving, except for those too poor or too stupid to figure out an effective excuse. That's a real problem, since it affects the composition of our jury pool.
I completely agree with you that jury service is a civic duty, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't point out flaws or try to make the experience better. If jury duty didn't resemble spending a week at the DMV as much, maybe fewer people would be making every excuse they can to try to get out of that civic duty.
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Monday August 22 2016, @05:35AM
Is it that hard to take 2 minutes every day to record an automated message which could save hundreds of prospective jurors from missing work and showing up on a given day for no reason??
It isn't, at least in some California counties; you call every afternoon that week to see if you need to come in, rather than come in (seriously?) daily. It's obvious inconsistencies like this that make me wish Google provided government computing services/infrastructure. Heck, if Apple did it, people would probably line up for jury duty.