From Here to Eternity

From Here to Eternity

There is something very familiar about this unfamiliar place. I am in the Jury Lounge of the North County Regional Court Center in Vista, California. I have been called to service by the Superior Court for the County of San Diego. I already pushed this off once a few months ago due to my business schedule and unlike the last time I was called a few years ago during COVID, my nightly call-ins resulted in my being asked on the third call to appear (I am in group 731 and groups 724 – 731 have been called in for the day). I actually saw this train coming around the curve on the prior two nights of call-in since they called groups 708 – 715 the first night, then 716 – 723 the second night. I am not much of a mind reader, but I can recognize a mathematical pattern, and I was pretty sure I would get called for today. I was not disappointed, which is to say, I guessed right and here I am. The North County Regional Center is 20-25 minutes from my house, so what seemed like a big benefit versus going all the way down to San Diego, has proven to be about a 10-15 minute benefit (though I am still glad not to be on the freeway sitting in traffic). The benefit of the Center is that it is in a less populated area of the County, there is lots of free parking and there seem to be lots of local restaurants available for lunch (more on that later, after I’ve experienced my first jury lunch).

I’m curious to learn about how jury duty in California differs from jury duty in New York, where I served many times in several levels of courts. So far, the jury room is not so different except that this facility is a bit newer and has some of the new-age features like a glass smokers booth as well as a larger administrative counter where everyone with an excuse can discuss it with a number of different clerks who have undoubtedly heard all the excuses ever summoned by a prospective juror. I’ve so far overheard two excuses being rendered. The first was a guy mentioning that he had an upcoming business trip. He was told that that would not necessarily be a problem. It seems that here in California its a one-day or one-trial system, so if you are not called on your first day to serve on a trial, you are excused. Once excused, you are released for another year or more. Those are the first difference to note. In New York, in the past, you pretty much had to hang around for 3-5 days before getting released and once released or empaneled and released, you were off the jury hook for four years. I guess that’s the leveraged version of the old “pay me now or pay me later” put into the context of jury service. The man was told to go back and sit down…and have a nice day.

The next excuse came to me as a pleasant surprise. The guy simply said that his family had tickets tomorrow for Disneyland. Well, if this had been Florida, I imagine the guy would have been strip-searched and handcuffed and told that he would be required to sit in the jury room for the next month and would not be allowed to go for lunch and would not be allowed to be empaneled anyway under any circumstance. But here in California, the clerk just smiled and said he was excused. The guy walked out with a smile on his face. He never showed a ticket or any evidence, because invoking the Disney name in California is obviously a secret password for liberal tolerance. When you think about it, the Republic of California should have tried to keep that juror to make sure that important juries have sufficient Disney-friendly jurors. I think I will put in a recommendation that they give Disney discount coupons to jurors who come back to serve after getting their dosage of Disney feel-good.

We are now watching a movie in the jury lounge. That’s a change worthy of the state that is home to the movie industry. The first movie we were shown was about the jury service process. It wasn’t a gripper like Twelve Angry Men, but it did explain how the courtroom was set-up and what the voi dire process was all about. Do they think none of us have seen My Cousin Vinnie? The second movie is about Voices for Children, which is a promotion for what is clearly a nice liberal program to help foster children get what they deserve from the system. I like that. I’m a big fan of movies to communicate with people, which is why I use movies in my ethics course.

The next drill was a speech by a man who is obviously the Jury Executive, based on his suit and tie appearance. He gave a friendly welcome but failed to turn on the microphone, so those of us in the back where the tables are could barely hear him. The one thing I did hear was that they would welcome any suggestions on how to improve the jury experience and we should tell one of the clerks at the back desk if we thought of anything. After he finished, a hardened veteran “non-com” woman in a long-sleeved t-shirt and with her hair in a messy bun came up to talk to the group. The first thing she did was turn on the microphone and roll her eyes. Enough said, this was going to be fun. She walked us through the detailed process of filling out our jury service form with any excuses we might have. She also talked us through the jury pay and travel mileage reimbursement process. We get $15 a day and $0.34 per mile, all of which doesn’t suggest that California values jurors any more than New York does. The final step in the form-filling process was to tear off the top of the form we had been sent (the bottom being the filled out portion we were to pass to the end of the row to be collected, just like in third grade), fold it and tuck it into the plastic name card holder that we were to pin to our chest for the duration.

When the Chief Master Sergeant was done telling us how to lick our little golf pencils and fill out our forms, I tried to put my name card in the plastic holder, only to find that it didn’t fit. No problem, I an no slouch when it comes to folding to fit, which I had to do on two sides to get the name card to slide into the plastic sleeve. I was quite proud of myself as I saw others struggling to make their name cards fit. It was break time, so I headed for the men’s room, but on the way past the clerk’s desk I decided to take up the Jury Executive’s suggestion about giving them my suggestions. I stopped and told the Chief Master Sergeant that my suggestion was that they format the form so that the name tag be perforated less randomly and perhaps sized to fit into the plastic sleeves they hand out. She looked at me like I was from Mars and then remembered that her boss had told us to give suggestions. She smirked and laughed and said, “right, I’ll get right on that.” She kept laughing and shaking her head as I headed to the rest room, in what I believe was her appreciation for my sense of humor, but may have been in her quandary about just how she was going to get even with me for daring to make a suggestion, or for that matter, for taking her boss seriously.

When I was waiting outside for the doors to open this morning, I met a fellow juror who was of German origin. We chatted and went through the normal “do you come here often?” niceties. He said he had been here before, but was surprised to be back since he was 73. I said I thought mandatory jury service ended at 70 and he just laughed. “Zat is vat I zthought too!” He went on to explain that his wife, who is 76 just had to spend two years on a grand jury, going in every Friday, and she still got another summons on one year later to the day. So, apparently, jury duty does not have an expiration date. It goes on from here to eternity.