Original Illustration: Tiffy Thompson
Why aren’t people thrilled to be called for jury duty? You get to somberly mete out justice like a sapient Philosopher King. You get out of going to work. And you get to be privy to lurid and horrible details (which everyone secretly loves!)
I served as a juror with the Ontario Arts Council once. It was a great time. I was the Sword of Damocles presiding over which fledgling artists got money or not. They also fed us delicious bagels. Apparently regular Jury Duty isn’t as delightful (or well compensated). If the Internet is any sort of barometer for general public opinion, it would seem that jury duty is tantamount to the 5th circle of hell and you should conjure any excuse get out of it.
Examples:
“Stand up every five minutes in the case and scream “I object!”…”
“Say a loved one is having serious surgery and/or died. …Highly effective. Really morbid. And you’re f*cked if they ever ask for proof.”
“An eye for an eye? I say we take his head for an eye! (Point at defendant).”
“Write down: ‘Using the Internet to research the manufacture of barely legal synthetic psychoactive drugs’ on the ‘special interests’ line of my juror information form.”
“My religion prohibits me from sitting near other people.”
“Would I have to bathe?”
“Keep saying very loudly, ‘Hey, who’s frying baloney?‘”
On the other hand, if jury duty appeals to you, there are steps to go through. First you’re randomly selected to fill out a questionnaire (under threat of fines/imprisonment). The Juror Questionaire listed on the Ministry of the Attorney General’s page is a little underwhelming. Just an uninspiring list of banalities: “Are you 18 years of age or over” and “Do you have any physical or mental disability that would prevent you from serving as a juror?”
They could extract a lot more useful information at this preliminary stage if they simply included a short personality evaluation. Like this one (a friend actually had to complete this as part of job application):
Evaluate and rank the following statements in order of importance to your own life:
a) I like myself
b) I have clear goals for my future
c) I think economic security is important
d) I hate myself
e) I love myself
f) I would rather poison a city’s water supply
g) I would imprison a wrongly convicted person for life
h) I see myself as an optimist
i) I would torture someone to death
He didn’t get the job, so draw your own conclusion.
If you fulfill the requirements of the juror questionnaire, you are then called on a juror summons.
Jimmy Fallavollita finished a stint as a juror at a criminal trial in Toronto this week. “For the summons they divide you up into different groups and call you in depending on what they need. Out of three hundred people they weeded it down to seventy five. Each lawyer was allowed ten dismissals. You sit there basically for a week.”
Was there a penetrative psychological evaluation? Not quite. “They only thing he asked was ‘are you prejudiced against black people?’ I guess if you wanted to get out of it you could say you’re racist. But even if you don’t get chosen you go back into the pool for another week.”
In order to get out of it, “if you have a decent excuse, you’re OK.” The court was pretty reasonable when it comes to extenuating circumstances. Pull the age card, or the childcare card, or whatever else is in your arsenal (irritable bowel syndrome?)
Six men and six women in total were chosen. The trial was straightforward – the defendant faced a gun charge and was clearly not guilty. It went quickly, except for some stalling by jurors who wanted extraneous deliberation – “They just watch too much Law and Order.”
The best part about jury duty was “sleeping in – I usually have to get up at 5 am”. The worst was the deadening (phoneless) boredom. “I can deal with it for a week but if it goes like two weeks — I overheard some people, two lawyers, talking while I was on lunch break. And one of them had said his jury had been there for four months. I was like, what the hell…you’d be just sitting for four months, like fuck.”
The trial process was somewhat interesting (“the lawyers all look like Darth Vader”), but he was relieved it wasn’t too grisly. “I don’t know if I could sit through a rape case or something, it’d be a little creepy. Or if it was some hell’s angel or mafia hitman.”
He would do it again. “It’s not a bad experience, its pleasant actually. You get bored of it after an hour or so but that’s the way it is.”
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