The New York State Court system's juror orientation video begins with Ed Bradley voice-overing the phrase "In olden times..." as a sub-History Channel re-enactment of a trial by ordeal takes place (shmuck tossed into lake as stern-faced dudes in cloaks and robes look on). Ed queries: "Does this look like justice to you?"
As you wait to be selected for a jury, you will occupy spaces which are nearly Platonic examples of the general category "waiting room." In one, row upon row of wooden pews fill a wedding-reception-sized, sunless room, facing a handsome, elevated podium, upon which a bored court officer reads the Daily News.
Once you have finished every scrap of your own newspaper, and have discovered that the novel in your possession is not, contrary to rumor, going to set Spanish literature on its oído, you have an excellent opportunity to catch up on The View by watching the pillar-mounted televisions. If you anticipate having trouble seeing the closed captions, bring opera glasses. Also, you'll find yourself hypnotized by the current ad campaign for Febreeze, which is apparently an attempt to legitimize huffing!
After a while, someone will mispronounce your name over the PA system, and you will file into a tiny room, which is a nearly Platonic example of the general category of "claustrophobic spaces." Here you will undergo "voir dire" (although you will not be told how to spell it). Although the attorneys on both sides of the exciting personal injury case in question are ostensibly here to ask you questions and figure out if you will be an impartial juror, they may also take this opportunity to make speeches about such things as "stare decesis," (you won't get a spelling there, either) and how they just want people who will "rely on your own common sense" and "just apply the law as the judge gives it to you." If you would not like to serve on this jury, take this opportunity to point out to the attorney that he seems to be asking for an oxymoronic combination of independence and subservience.
When your case eventually comes to trial, be prepared to learn valuable life lessons from the events you hear about from the witnesses. The most important of these: if you are on the witness stand, and the opposition lawyer, over your own attorney's strenuous objections, introduces into evidence the fact that you have been convicted of smoking dope in public, it is not necessary to counter his suggestion that this makes you unreliable by insisting that you don't smoke the stuff -- you merely sell it!
TIP FOR LAWYERS INVOLVED IN TRAFFIC CASES: Don't come to work without visual aids. The words "traveling northbound along" are enough to make even the most dedicated juror immediately and irrecoverably drowsy, particularly when Spring is practically bustin' out all over outside the half-glazed window.
Finally, you will deliver your verdict and be discharged with the thanks of the court, or more specifically of a judge who looks and sounds remarkably like Detective Sipowicz, but mellowed out a little. When you leave, the attorneys will want to talk to you about the case and how they did, and happy defendants may come up and want to shake your hand. If, as it happens, you didn't come away liking anyone involved in the whole squalid little affair, it's not necessary to stand there and be polite and answer questions. Unless, like me, you have absolutely no spine whatsoever.
Posted by BT at March 02, 2004 11:35 PMA number of points, several of them surprisingly on topic, assuming I've read and comprehended fully, which isn't always my thing:
They show that Ed Bradley video out here in the provinces, as well.
I'm curious what the Spanish novel is, I suspect it's that recently translated "McOndo" one whose title is a name I can't think of. You might be wanting the word oreja, which is the sticky-outy part of the ear, rather than oído, which is the part that does the hearing. Noting that the idiom may not even exist as such in Spanish only furthers my reckless disregard for your Spanglish humor prerogative. Lo siento. But it's interesting that there's a distinction between the functional and decorative parts of the ear.
If you had a spine, it's unlikely you would have been chosen in the first place.
I need to tell someone that in the restaurant we ate in Friday night, where most of the wine descriptions read exactly like wine descriptions everywhere, one Italian red was described as "Soft and round globs of jammy fruit." We did not order it.
Posted by: Scott on March 3, 2004 07:46 AMThanks for the oreja/oído correction; the book in question is The Shadow of the Wind (La sombra del viento) by Carlos Ruiz Zafon, which apparently has quite a buzz surrounding it, and (in its English translation) is the lead title from a much-ballyhooed new division of Penguin, which is headed up by a much-ballyhooed editor. I don't dislike it -- it's sort of Umberto-Eco-lite -- and the Barcelona setting is colorful enough. But the author is constantly coming up with similies and metaphors which are meant to be playfully poetic but which seem forced and imprecise to me. And while I've been assured that the numerous literary cliches (femmes fatales, noir villains, irrepressible Sancho Panza-esque sidekick) are all self-consciously employed devices, all the self-consciousness in the world can't bring them to life. It reads like a very skillfully manipulated puppet show -- entertaining, but limited in how much feeling it can evoke.
Posted by: BT on March 3, 2004 05:00 PMWhat I meant to clarify there: since I'm not reading it in Spanish, or with a reasonable knowledge of the Spanish literary heritage behind it, I may be missing quite a bit of the author's intended postmodern lit-referential work. But as a novel in English on its own, it's not living up to the many glowing reviews I heard.
Posted by: BT on March 3, 2004 05:02 PMI'd suggest tossing it out on its oreja.
Posted by: Scott on March 4, 2004 04:41 PMWow! How can I be a juror?
Ironically, I volunteered to be a mock juror for a friend in law school several years ago. I really didn't get much out of the class except one thing: You cannot volunteer to be a juror in the Commonwealth of Virginia.
If you volunteer, you are automatically stricken from the jury pool for that year. Apparently, this is an old law that harks back to when there were, say, 200 people in Virginia. There was a problem back then because juries were getting stacked by volunteers who just happened to be relatives of the accused.
So if you write in to whomever and ask to be a juror every year you can, in fact, predict failure.
Hmmm, it sounds as if the kindly old retired judge, whose sole purpose seemed to be informing people of the best lunch spots and to give folks an overview of the judicial architecture around Foley Square, has finally departed. While the architectural lecture was pretty interesting in and of itself, the highlight of his spiel was when he said "And now, to my favorite part of the judicial process: if you do not speak english, please excuse yourselves. But you see the paradox here."
And how could one NOT order a spherical globular fruit, Mister Williams?
Posted by: bootsy on March 5, 2004 10:00 AMAs wine? I was sore afraid that I'd get a goblet filled with what looked like bath beads. I prefer a few hours of witty and attractive before I have to chat with Ms. Delta Low-Flow.
Posted by: Scott on March 5, 2004 10:32 AM