Jury duty

      My first experience with jury duty was when I was a graduate student, preparing for my oral exams for the PhD. I was called to appear in court in Berkeley, and was very anxious about whether the case would interfere with my exam date, which had been very hard to schedule. When I showed up, there were about fifty of us in a very large room, and each juror was asked if they had any relationship to the University of California. When each person answered yes, the lawyers finally turned to the room and asked if there was anyone who didn't--almost everyone did. What a company town. This turned out to be relevant because the case involved a trespassing charge made by the UC police against a man--an elderly person with a bag of papers who we called a street person then-- who had been sitting in an inner courtyard in the math building on a Sunday, have his lunch, not bothering anyone. The rookie UC cops arrested him when he argued with them about leaving. He insisted on defending himself, in spite of the judge's advice against it, so the case went to trial. He wanted to argue that UC was funded by the taxpayers and therefore was a public place and should be open to the public. The judge instructed us that according to the law, the Regents of UC had to be considered as persons, and as the property owners. Most of us were resentful that the charges had even been brought at all, and we didn't want to find him guilty, but according to the evidence and the instructions, we had to. It was an educational experience about how one ends up going with the system in spite of one's beliefs. He got off with a warning by the judge.

      This week's experience with jury duty is being conducted over zoom because of covid; a hundred of us are sitting around in a zoom room while the lawyers question the smaller jury pool of sixteen (twelve jurors plus four alternates). We have to look at the screen and act as if we are attentive, although, in fact, I have discovered that it is easy to browse or type without detection (we are all muted) because it just looks as if you are sitting there looking at the camera when in fact you are scrolling for BTS news on Twitter.

     The case is a civil case involving a lawsuit against a corporation. On the questionnaire we filled out before the voir dire, we were asked how we felt about corporations, and I answered "Not a fan." This could be one reason why I was not included in the pool for questioning, but I bet it's because I'm a "little old lady" (and therefore more likely to be sympathetic to the plaintiff) and a retired university professor (and thus "less amenable to persuasion") according to some of the rule-of-thumb ideas I found when I looked up voir dire guidelines. Since they are supposed to finish up very soon and have almost made their numbers, I am not going to have to serve. I still have to show up again for one more session, but it looks as if they will seat a jury and four alternates with the pool they have. Fingers crossed.