Three weeks before break I got the news that everyone dreads: I had jury duty. I was immediately suspicious; I’m not from Massachusetts originally, so why do I have to show up at the Suffolk Superior Courthouse for jury duty? On top of that, the date that I was supposed to show up for was over break, so not only was I not in the state at that time, I wasn’t even in the country (on that specific date I was on an airplane coming home from the Israel/Palestine trip sponsored by BC). So, as you can imagine, I was freaking out.
But then, I got my life together and figured it out. Unfortunately, it turns out that anyone who spends 50% or more of their time in Massachusetts in any given year is subject to jury duty. So to all of the students that come to Boston for school and then leave, you get to serve in Massachusetts. Another pesky part of Massachusetts’s jury duty system is the fact that students aren’t immediately exempt from it. We have to show up. The good thing is we can change the date of our jury duty (which I did), but we still have to show up.
So there I was, bright and early at 7:40 am on the first Wednesday of the semester, turning in my form to fulfill my civic responsibility. I will say, the Suffolk Superior Courthouse was pretty easy to get to, it’s a five-minute walk from the Park Street T stop, and it’s pretty inside, which is a bonus. I had called the day before to find out that yes, I did have to show up the next day, so after checking in, I sat in a large room with 250 chairs and waited. And waited. And waited.
Suffolk Superior Courthouse: my home away from home for four hours
At around 8:30, the Court Officer told us how everything was going to go down. First up: a 20 minute video telling us how awesome (!) jury duty was. I will admit it, after watching that video I was pumped. I was excited. I wanted to be on a jury. I thought it would be awesome. I was super down to fulfill my civic responsibility. The video keeps telling you over and over again that you’re lucky to be able to be on a jury because there are so many judicial systems that don’t allow jury of peers. And they are right and I was excited. After the movie we had a judge come down and talk with us (and yes we had to rise when the bailiff said “All rise”) and she made it sound like there were a bunch of trials that were going to need juries. I was ready. This was my time to decide the fate of someone.
Now, here’s the crappy part. After the video, they call perspective jurors in groups of about 12 to go up to the Courtroom. They got up to juror 103 and I was juror 117. That’s right, here I was excited for jury duty, excited to go up to the courtroom and show that I could be an awesome juror and not be biased at all…and it didn’t happen. Congrats to the 103 people in front of me, at least you actually did something.
While not what our room was actually like, this is definitely what everyone was feeling.
So I sat there. For three hours. I read, I listened to music, I daydreamed, I read some more, I charged my iPhone, daydreamed some more. I kept hoping for the Court Officer to come back in and say, “I need jurors 104-120 to come up to the front please” but it never happened. After three hours the Court Officer came in and said that the two trials that potentially needed jurors ended up not needing a jury because one had pled out and the other one had settled. Thank you, and good-bye. My dreams of being a juror were over.
Not only did I get back to BC much earlier than expected (meaning I had to go to class), my semi-ridiculous hope of fulfilling my civic responsibility was destroyed. Will I go back to jury duty? Yes, mostly because if I don’t show up I get held with a fine of $2,000, but also because of the small dream of being on a jury. It’s correct that jury duty is boring, and uneventful, and basically a waste of time. But maybe the dream of being a part of a judicial system that is rather unique to our country is worth it putting up with the bad stuff.
Photo Sources:
http://www.aallnet.org/chapter/llne/llnenews/v22n3/courthouse.jpg
https://cabinfeverchronicles.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/rod-richards-ju…