I was called for jury duty at the Federal Court for Eastern District of New York in Brooklyn last week. I had served jury duty before at the county courthouse in Suffolk County but wasn’t placed on a case. This was also different from my last experience because of the nature of the Federal structure as opposed to the state or county structure. These people meant business and there was no getting off a jury.

On the day of jury selection I was in a room of about 200 people on the second floor of the court-house. This was a group of randomly selected 200 people from Suffolk, Nassau, Queens, Kings and Richmond counties to converge at this place at this time. Besides the walking stereotypes of Long Island-ness, Brooklyn-ity, and Staten Islandolism were two noticeable groups
1) hot chicks – I called these “Jury Booty”
2) fans of mid-90’s college rock – I called these “Jury Hootie”

I was called to a court room with about 30 other potential jurors for jury selection.  14 people were randomly called up to sit in the jury box and asked if we felt there was any reason that we couldn’t be jurors.  Everyone had a reason.  The worst part about this was the white noise machine.  Every time someone approached the judge and the lawyers to get out they’d put on this machine that sounded like radio static so we couldn’t hear the potentially personal information.  Anyway, this went on for hours.  I tried to use my experience with legal research to get out of jury duty but they didn’t bite.

The most amazing part of jury selection is that no matter who people were, how they were related to the case, and what similar experiences they’ve been through – they were convinced they would be impartial in any case.  “has anyone here filed a discrimination suit or been the subject of a discrimination suit” “yes, your honor” “do you think that would affect your ability to be fair and impartial?” “no, your honor”  BULL!!!!!!!!!!!!!! When it came down to it in deliberations, people fell into exactly how you would imagine from their past experiences – the union members sided with the union guy, people who think discrimination is a bogus concept refused to even acknowledge the issue in the case.

I was put on an employment discrimination case.  Discrimination was a major part of the case but the real issue was retaliation.  Did this man’s company retaliate against him because he filed a discrimination complaint?  The defense did a good job trying to confuse the jury into thinking many of the jurors that the case was about the discrimination in question when it was really about the retaliation.

Most people on the jury were real nice – like this poor woman who had to come from Riverhead everyday – she wasn’t happy about it but anyone who isn’t really PO’d 24-7 about having to do that must be real nice.  Half the jury owned guns.  At least one guy was racist and there was a woman who had an awfully depressing story to tell for every topic of conversation that we might all engage in.   No matter what we were talking about it would remind her of something dreadful.

I think it was an interesting experience all in all – the judge was really awesome (he yelled at the lawyers a lot) and we found the plaintiff had made his case (after an entire day of deliberation in which people had to be really really convinced it was the right thing, which was obvious to most of us).

Anyway, the whole experience was a total eye-opener. It re-assures me and scares me of the system all at once.  I guess I’m reassured because I’m a part of it. I’m scared because so many weird people are also a part of it.