I recently was called for jury duty in my county, which is Essex County in New Jersey. I take my civic duties fairly responsibly, so I filled out the form and showed up right on time on my assigned date. The jury management office in Essex was rebuilt just a few years ago, and relative to the other places where I’ve done jury duty in the past, it was quite luxurious. The seats in the waiting rooms were fairly comfortable, not the old molded plastic auditorium chairs. There was free wifi and a computer lounge with library-like carrels where you could sit in relative privacy with your laptop. The waiting rooms offered a choice between three TV channels, CNN for news and politics, ESPN for sports, and another one for the usual “lifestyle” shows. The public address system worked relatively well and you could hear the announcements, and there was a free coffee dispensary with 4 Keurig machines. Essex County is a relatively large urban county and the courts are busy, so there were a lot of people waiting to be called out to the courtrooms for possible selection. But the management area was spacious enough to keep things fairly comfortable. So I could not complain at all about the waiting and processing area.

And yet, I was pretty miserable from 8:15 am on Tuesday when I first reported right through 12:15 pm on Wednesday when I was released. I had been called to a courtroom for final evaluation each day, but both times I was excused for various reasons beyond my control. So I didn’t wind up sitting on a jury. And that’s probably for the best, because I just wasn’t in a good mood about the whole thing. Yea, I watched the video that they show you right after your report, where the Chief Justice of the NJ Supreme Court tells you what a great duty it is to a free society that ordinary citizens like you be used to judge their peers whenever the courts are called on to resolve a dispute. And I agree with that theory. But still . . . I don’t know, there was just something I found unpleasant about being a stranger in a crowd, being ordered and herded around by anonymous bureaucrats as if we were in a prison or in the military. Now I know a little better why most people don’t like prison or being in the military.

Funny thing is that I don’t remember ever feeling this way about jury duty in the past. Somehow, most of my past experiences were in places where the crowds were smaller and you were usually addressed directly by a human, you weren’t herded into a big room awaiting the next announcement from speakers mounted in the ceiling. And maybe I was spoiled by my past experiences. I was never selected to a jury in my life, despite 4 or 5 previous jury duty rounds. In every case, someone would  »  continue reading …