Jury Duty

James Wolcott muses about being sent to jury duty this week. Myself, I've never served on a jury before. Several times in my life I've received a jury summoning forwarded from a previous address. Each time I'd read the fine print telling me to ignore the letter if I no longer lived in the district in question, so I'd toss the notice into the trash bin. I guess some would find that a useful side effect of moving every few years but I always felt a little left out. I was curious, what was jury duty really like? What's it like to haggle over the life and death issues facing our fellow man in a court of law? I wondered if I'd ever find out?

Then one day my summoning was finally valid, they caught me at the correct address (why I still lived there and everything). Finally, I would experience the Enlightened courtroom drama first hand, experience the pains and joy of the ultimate reality show in person. The day of the summoning was so special, so interesting I still remember the exact date, Sept. 11, 2001....

You can probably guess how the rest of the story goes....