November 29, 2000
J. Doe

My introduction to jury service began with a fifteen minute video taped prologue narrated by 60 Minutes commentator, Ed Bradley. I recognized the voice immediately, and was one of several jurors in a waiting room the size of Grand Central Station to actually look up from the morning paper to focus on one of two 15 inch television monitors mounted to a wall approximately 750 feet away.

The low humidity New York City winter weather and the drier air of the ventilation system, being forced with a freight train roar through a single louvered grill in the ceiling [easily identified by the 20 foot, black skid marks radiating like dusty spokes from what looked like some kind of zero-gravity NASA pyrotechnics experiment], created potentially hazardous environment. Had I made an attempt to turn the up the volume [so that I could hear the narrator over the train] by trekking 750 feet across the cavernous room to the television set, past knob-kneed geriatric patients huddled face to face along what used to be aisles, the amount of static electricity generated by my movement would have caused an electric arc to form, between my soon to be singed finger and the volume knob, that would make a Van de Graaf Generator experiment look like a hand buzzer gimmick.

As you are pondering the sweet smell of burning flesh, let me remind you that Ed Bradley's voice is only what I heard [aside from the phlegm filled coughs of the aforementioned geriatric patients, and the freight train running somewhere overhead]; my visual acuity allowed me [even from such a distance] to see the drama being played out for our viewing pleasure. The scene was one of medieval Scotland or Ireland [based on the Braveheart attire donned by the characters... I resisted my urge to scream "Freedom!"]. My peers and I were shown a man being bound at the hands and feet and tossed into a lake while his family and friends watched with distraught and pained looks on their faces, from the tall grassy and wooded fringe [very picturesque]. Apparently the courts have found that although American citizens no longer fear the classic monetary fine associated with lying under oath [in order to assure a speedy egress from this giant dusty juror-morgue filled with the stank of asbestos and the perfume of denture adhesive] that their primitive fear of drowning will keep them honest and highly morally spirited during the course of this ordeal. It was later explained to me, in order to coax me out of a nearby janitor's closet [which I had barricaded myself into in an effort to avoid this gruesome end which I certainly deserved, for having sat directly under a sign that read "Absolutely no food or drink in the jury room" and eaten my breakfast] that the drowning was used as an poignant example of the old way to decide innocence or guilt: if you floated you were guilty, and if you sank you were innocent... I was glad to hear that Ed Bradley didn't support my prior interpretation.

After this ordeal, I proceeded directly out of the courtroom, after being instructed that a court representative would be reading [to be read, butchering] names in approximately 14 weeks, and that we were to wait quietly in our seats until that time, and then listen for our names to be mispronounced. Once in the hallway, out of the path of the locomotive which sounded like it was just about make a station stop right there on the 7th floor, I proceeded to use my cell phone to contact my office in an effort to provide necessary consultation to my supervisors and my co-workers. This consultation consisted of acknowledging that my screen saver was running properly, explaining that being "injury, duty" was not to be confused with racketeering, and confirming that my roast beef sandwich experiment could now be removed from the refrigerator and discarded. Apparently, during my refuge in the janitor's closet, I had missed a request by the court representative, that cell phones not be used in the hallway. I was made aware of my oversight by a helpful prospective juror, who was taking his civil obligation a little to seriously. Apart from the suit and tie he was wearing [which would have been an impressive sight if he had actually been at work] he appeared fairly normal, aside from his morbidly pompous air. Being that I was in a court of law, I parried my way out of the situation by devising an alternate interpretation of the word "not", and thanked him for his alert, yet misguided, response to my cellular violation of courthouse conduct.

The jury selection process began, after 50 names were called, and my peers and I were lined up in the hallway [next to the janitor's closet]. We were told to proceed to a courtroom on another floor, via an elevator bank which consisted of three pickle-barrels being hoisted by two senior citizens with arthritis; I'm just glad I learned to climb rope in gym class during grade school.

The courtroom was about as roomy as a Pontiac Fiero with a dirty clothes hamper in the passenger seat, except that it didn't smell as nice. The "alleged" criminals were too busy selling crack and stealing wallets to notice us at first, but their heads perked up when the judge said they were "presumed innocent". Yea right... presumed innocent by who? Presumed innocent by stupid, blind, deaf mutes, who were raised in wooden crates like veal, and worship at the Lord's House of Fast Food Dogma, go to picnics every Sunday with their retarded Siamese twins and eat Oscar Meyer hot dogs by the dozen without ever taking them out of their hermetically sealed packages, are surprised and awed that the sun comes up every single day, wonder endlessly about the marvels of plastic cling-wrap, and return everything they've ever found to the "lost and found" [which they assume was invented when they were in the first grade].

When it comes right down to it, the justice system of the United States of America just shouldn't work at all. The only thing that's certain about the system is that whoever invented it had a really good sense of humor.

Join me again next week, when I address such issues as: (1) how the judge is able to talk without moving her lower jaw, (2) how many times I winked at the sexy prosecutor with the pretense that I was having trouble with my contacts [which I don't wear], and (3) how completely idiotic 91.67% of the jury was [that's everyone except me].