Jury Duty

The Jury Duty system is one of he many things wrong with America.

Yes, from the negative tone of this first sentence, I was summoned to jury duty yesterday, and I did NOT like it. 2nd time in 3 years.......the first time, my name actually got called and I was pulled into a courtroom, but I wasn't selected as part of the panel. This time, I literally sat in a room all day for 8 hours watching my life flash before my eyes, trying to read my book(s) comfortably but failing to do so due to the sheer number of people around me and the noise level, as well as the fact you're in jury duty and just don't want to do anything anyway.

The jury duty process is just an inane abuse of time. It happens first because America is one of the only countries to use a jury system, a trial by a group of one's peers that somehow "reflect the general consciousness of society, as the theory goes. Never mind that these peers could be vastly uninformed, know nothing about the law, and could be the most despicable people on the face of the earth; or worse, they could be lawyers. In the system, the judge, the lawyers, in fact the whole judicial system, comes down to what happens in a room where random people select what happens to one person. It really unnecessarily puts the power of deciding things in a group that really doesn't deserve to, nor should.

The next problem of this "jury" process is getting all the jurors: I counted at least 150-200 people selected for jury duty on the day I was there. About 90 of those people (about half) were actually called into a courtoroom, much less actually paneled, so that out of 180 or so 20 people probably got selected, a nice 11% batting average, while 89% of the people there wasted their day in jury duty, 50% of those not even leaving the jury waiting room (like me- not holding a grudge or anything). And that's just the people in Ventura County Superior Court, an offshoot of the Los Angeles Superior Court system, on a Monday. Talk about fantasy football or iPhones negatively affecting workplace productivity, jury duty has to be a main culprit preventing Americans from working.

And the reason we need those 180-200 people every day is also due to an inane and inexplicable judicial process: Courts set about 100 cases or so for trial on the same day about 6 months in advance, hoping (and crossing their fingers) that most of them will settle, so that of the few that haven't settled, they can deal with those on the day of their trial. However, because the Court doesn't know how many of those 100 or cases might settle or not settle, they call a whole bunch of jurors in every day "just in case" they have a lot of cases. There's an easy solution to this: a week or 2 weeks before trial, CALL the lawyers on the cases and see if they've settled or not and still need a trial. If it has already settled, CROSS THEM OFF THE LIST. This is a job that one court clerk can do, instead of pull 200 people from their everyday working lives (where some of them don't get paid for that day of jury duty) and have them sit in a room all day, with not exactly the most comfortable of seats neither.


Now that I've worked myself into a huff, here are some other things we could have instead of Jury Duty day that would be more productive:


1.) "Appreciate Each Other" Day: People from all walks of life are summoned to a park or community center or some sort of large area and just talk about life, talk through their problems, learn about what others do. Every 3 years, you get a nice "recharge. Group activities like fun icebreakers, 2 truths and a lie, "One thing I love about my job and One thing I hate" are all good ideas to get started.

2.) "Physical Fitness" Day: People are called into to a gym and play different sports that they might not normally try, not only to get them physically active for that day but to get them interested in sports that they might try. Climbing wall, rope climb, volleyball, you name it. Dodgeball would be included. Seems like a great investment considering we're the "most obese country in the nation."

3.) "Driving Tips Day": Especially with new cell phone laws and new distractions like texting, seems like a great investment for our personal health to have this day for everyone, everyone go to a DMV and get updates on driving, with driving simulators, like a driving checkup. Doesn't sound as fun as the other 2, but the utilitarian benefits of that would be huge.

4.) Government Day: Everyone go in every 4 years (for every new 4-year Presidential term) and learn about new laws, regulations, policies, etc. that government has created, whether federal, state, municipal, etc. just to inform everyone about the laws. This would help society by, you know, PREVENTING PEOPLE FROM BREAKING LAWS.

Anyway, it won't be another year until Jury Duty day for me, but as evident from this post I will be eagerly awaiting that day again.

Fantasize on,

Robert Yan