Originally ran in Sunday, August 1, 2021 editions of Louisiana Gannett newspapers.
There’s a wise old saying that goes like this: “If at first you don’t succeed, then skydiving is probably not for you.”
Words to live (longer) by.
And there’s this other wise old saying: “We all want to be picked, but sometimes, it’s good not to be chosen, like, for instance, for jury duty.”
And all the people said, “Amen.”
You’ve been there. The Jury Summons comes in the mail and your first response is automatic and very human: “What can I do to get out of this? Don’t these people know I work? Don’t they know I have a job?, responsibilities? Don’t they know that being in a courthouse gives me the jits?”
“They” know that, but they also know you have a duty, as an American, and that someone has to make up “a jury of your peers,” and you might just be that peer.
So you shift to an attitude of gratitude, happy you don’t live in a country where you can be thrown in the Big House on a whim by a government that doesn’t believe in trials, much less fair ones. If I were on the inside—if the foot were on the other shoe, so to speak—I’d like to know I’d get a trial by jury, even if a not-very-smart person like me were on it.
If you haven’t been summoned, you will be. Eventually. This week, it happened to me.
“You are hereby ordered to appear for jury duty in The First Judicial District Court, Caddo Parish, Louisiana, for the week of July 26, in the year of our Lord 2021.” (I added “in the year of our Lord” because that phrase always makes me smile, and a smile comes in handy if you’ve been “summoned” and “ordered” to do something you are “required by law” to do. So there’s that.
Came to peace with it quickly, considered it a privilege. But that doesn’t mean I wanted to be picked.
They didn’t the last time, about 20 years ago. That dismal day, we sat in the jury box and they asked us questions. I was on the front row. They didn’t choose me. As I left I noticed my pants were unzipped—true story—and have always wondered if that’s why I wasn’t picked. I imagined the lawyers huddling: “Seems like a nice enough guy but if he’s not smart enough to zip his jeans, I mean…”
This time was different. For one, my pants were zipped. For two, I called Sunday night after 6, punched in my nine-digit “participant number,” and jumped for joy when the recorded voice said I wasn’t needed and to call back the next day.
Sweet!
Same thing Monday night.
Glory!
But then came Tuesday night. “You are to report for duty at 9 am to the Caddo Parish Courthouse, Room G-18. Please make sure your pants are zipped.”
Wednesday, there me and the other jurors and various scofflaws were, walking through a metal detector at 501 Texas Street in Shreveport. If you didn’t have a mask, they gave you one because, I guess, it was Wednesday. I think the Centers for Disease Control are now advising us to wear masks Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, double masks Tuesdays, triple masks Thursdays, and no masks on weekends. I think…
Right or wrong, I’m sure the guidelines or mandates or whatever they’re calling them today will change before the next full moon.
They called roll in G-18, a non-descript rectangle the size of a classroom with rows of plastic chairs hooked together. There was also a judge’s mini-desk and sort of a witness stand, but nothing fancy. If you compare it to a nice courtroom, this was like a Single A baseball park, a place to handle minor-league offenses.
For us it was a holding cell.
There were about 25 of us. Had we not been semi-social distanced, it would have felt like home room at West Monroe High again.
After she’d called roll, the very nice young woman named, I believe, Stacy, told us to hang tight, that the judge was going through his “docket” of cases for the week in the real courtroom and she’d be back to fetch us directly.
My fellow prospective jurors played on their phones. Got up and went to the bathroom. I read a book, “How To Get Out Of Jury Duty For Dummies.”
The Big Clock on the wall read 11:20 when Stacy came back, cheerful as could be, and told us the judge and lawyers and People Who Were Maybe Going To Be On Trial had worked everything out and that we could go and didn’t have to call again. Just like that.
She said it’s not unusual that, when the parties involved know a jury is right down the hall, things get more For Real and defendants/lawyers become a bit more willing to bargain, or whatever it is they do. So we served a purpose, sounds like.
After the ever upbeat Stacy gave us her verbal and metaphorical Get Out Of Jail Free card, she gave us an actual Work Excuse piece of paper, official and everything. Like a hall pass.
A wasted morning, you think? Negative. Whatever happened in the courtroom while we waited meant we could leave. We would not be there all day; we would not be sequestered at the Holiday Hotel. We were in the wings in case, but justice was served anyway, even if we were needed only as a decoy.
Like you, if called again, I’ll be proud to serve. But on this day, it never felt so good to be so not wanted.
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