The Government Held My Life Hostage
by
, 12-16-2013 at 08:48 PM (1249 Views)
In spite of my best efforts to stay under the radar as much as possible, they finally caught me and I have been stuck on Jury duty this past week. Just got out today. The experience all in all on the one hand there were parts of it that were kind of interesting, but it was also a very soul sucking process. The worse part was the commute back and forth every day. The court was in the city, SF and I took BART there and back, and had to get up at 7 in the morning and did not get back home tell around 6. In the first place those are the two busiest times because it is when everyone is coming and going from work and you know how much I enjoyed being forced into such close quarters with other people so frequently. In the second place it got very repetitive very quickly. In order to amuse myself and help keep my sanity I would make up little stories about various different other people on the train in my head. (Or rather I would silently mock them to myself).
Most the stops along the way were cities I was familiar with, but there was this one stop called Rockridge that I never heard of before, and wasn't even sure exactly where it was. it was the last stop before Oakland, I think it was probably in the Berkeley area, and it did not seem like many people came or went from that station, so I started making up stories about Rockridge to amuse myself and then I would try and guess based on what people looked like if they were going to get off at my imagined version of what Rockridge was like, and it was pretty awesome when I was right. One day there was this group of very obnoxious preppy yuppy types standing in front of me, like you could tell just be looking at them that they were probably the most irritating people ever. So I thought to myself "Oh they are totally Rockridge people" and as it turns out they were.
By the time I got home I was completely zombified and all I wanted to do was eat, jump in the shower and than crash, between the travel, and listening to attorney's all day, my mind just ceased to function, so I got virtually no reading done during this time.
There were parts of the trail itself that were kind of interesting and watching the lawyers was in fact like watching a sit-com. They were hysterical. The best was the Prosecutor. He had a flare for the dramatic. He had the greatest facial expressions and elaborate gestures. Sometimes he would get sarcastic with the witnesses and could be a real bulldog, (he did also get in trouble with the judge a few times) and when the Defense made objections he had this expression of total exasperation like he cannot even believe what the other guy said. Also one of his favorite objections was "That is broad, vague, and ambiguous" of which I would think to myself.....umm that is just a list of synonyms are you consulting a law book or your thesaurus right now?
The Defense attorney I thought was kind of a shyster. The toughest part of being a jour was just having to sit there and listen because there were a few times when I really wished I could argue with the attorneys about things they said. I was afraid I would get kicked out of the court a few times just because of my facial expressions, because I know the jury is supposed to be indifferent until deliberation but I was making some faces, especially at some of the things the Defense was saying. (Though I will say in spite of my own personal feelings, purely based on the evidence the Defense ultimately won because the evidence just did not support the claim of the Plaintiff, who I really wished I could find in favor of)
The best part of the whole thing was lunch break, and not just because it meant getting to escape the courtroom for a while. But it just so happens that where the court was located there were a ton of various different Asian Food restaurants (and Asian-Eastern cuisine is one of my favorites). Plus on Tuesdays and Thursdays there were grommet food trucks at the UN Plaza which is also where the BART station was. I was the only jour willing to brave the city streets in search of food, everyone else just all huddled off to the cafeteria in the court together, but I enjoyed trying out new places to eat every day and had some awesome food while I was there.
I want to go back into the city on my own just to try out some of the places I did not get to check out yet.
So I am finally free and have my life restored to me once again.