Doing time… (on jury duty)
March 29th, 2007 by Jeremy Toeman
My first 20 years in the US were as a green card holder, so any time I received a juror summons, I was always able to check the convenient little “I’m some kind of hippie commie who’s stealing jobs from Americans” checkbox. Now, as a law-abiding God-fearing AMERcan living in a nucular family, I’m out of excuses. The weird part is, I really like the idea of serving jury duty. I’d actually love to see the internal workings of a courtroom, get really into a case, debate the issues, and be part of the process. It’s the pesky “carving out the time” part that’s a little problematic right now.
The good part is, the summons waiting room has WiFi.
The bad parts are, it’s not free, it’s slow, and it drops connections every 10-ish minutes.
I’ll be here all day (unless I’m lucky enough to get called up soon and get eliminated), doing some work, maybe watching a little Slingbox, or, thanks to my friend Michael Gartenberg, playing Peggle (yes, I paid for it too - such a timesucker!).
UPDATE: time off for good behavior! I’m outta here.
March 29th, 2007 at 2:55 pm
surprisingly, you can get wi-fi throughout the entire courthouse (for a nominal daily fee). not surprisingly, the crappiest coverage is in the downstairs waiting room.
and “I’m an illegal alien and don’t speak English very well” is also not a proper excuse to duck serving on the jury. if anything, your peers will make you foreman for it.
March 30th, 2007 at 8:02 am
Making racial slurs anytime you open your mouth is an easy way to get off the case though. Much like yourself I was excited to serve on jury duty early last year - getting to know how the process works and serve my country… it ended up being a really interesting criminal case that I was fortunately not “appropriate” for…
you’ll have to let us know how it went.