Programming Note: I'm going on vacation next week, so don't expect much here for the next two weeks.
Poorly Organized Thoughts About: Jury Duty
My sweetheart and I both received a jury duty summons on the same day. They were delivered to our PO Box, simple plain envelopes with the county seal on the front. This is probably the third or fourth time I’ve been summoned in my life, but the first time at my current residence. We did think it was a little weird that we both got summoned at the same time for the same service date. It was the style that is not uncommon, where you call in to the clerk the night before to find out if your physical presence is needed. I had ample notice to let my job know, although there were some key events that had to be either rescheduled or covered by someone else. But with the call system, I was in a bit of a limbo, where I didn’t know one way or the other if I would be available. If I wasn’t needed at court, I could just do my job as planned, but if I was a lot of gears had to move quickly. But we had a plan in place, which to my mind, all but assured that I would be called in. Sort of an inverse Murphy’s law sort of thing.
But it was not to be! I got called in the night before to perform my civic duty. And so did my sweetheart. We were in two different groups, but called in to the same location, “the Jury Suite” the following day. So we got up and drove down to the county courthouse complex. Our host for the day, the clerk who checked us in and would be por primary point of contact for the day was downright shocked that a married couple had been called at the same time. She confirmed that we were both willing and able to serve that day, I guess in case we had to deal with childcare or similar, and then got us checked in. We weren’t the first ones there, but we were probably one of the first five. The jury suite had chairs for probably 75-100 people and over the next 30 minutes it filled up to about 80% capacity. This was already a nicer experience than what I had when I served in Austin, where potential jurors basically waited in a hallway outside the courtroom until we started. The suite had wifi, and they explicitly told us it was fine to use phones, tablets etc. until we were actually in the courtroom.
At the tip of the hour our host came in and started giving us our official introduction to the process. As a group we had to stand and take an oath of service, after witch we watched a pair of videos. The videos were on physical DVDs, which made my little physical media nerd heart proud, and we watched them in a TV wheeled in like one of those carts teachers use when they’re having a bad day and don’t want to work very hard. The first one was about how the courts actually work. It gave us an overview of the different jobs that people would be doing in the court room, like the judge, defense, prosecutor, bailiff, clerk, and court reporter. It also covered the entire process of being a juror, from how the list if potential jurors is generated to what the responsibilities of the jury are throughout the trial process. The whole thing felt a little basic to me, but I realize that when you’re pulling from the entire eligible county population, you can’t expect anyone to know the whole process and all the parts in advance. So telling us what we needed to know, without expectations, was the right choice. The second video was more interesting, if only because u didn’t expect it. The topic of video two was unconscious bias. The video outlined what unconscious bias is, how it effects everybody to one extent or another, and gave us some tips on recognizing that bias and working against it to be fair as jurors. Not much in this video was new to me, but I was impressed that it was something the court took seriously enough to produce a video about and show to all potential jurors.
I should mention that our host for the day was incredibly good at her job. It was clear she took jury service very seriously, but that was because she understood how important it is for a functioning justice system. She was experienced enough that she must have been doing this same thing for years, giving the same speeches and explanations, but she still seemed excited about all of it. I was already excited about jury duty, because I’m a weirdo, but if I wasn’t, I suspect some of her enthusiasm would have rubbed off on me.
The rest of my service was spent waiting in the suite. There were three cases on the docket that day which needed juries to be selected, we found out later, but we never made it into the courtroom because as each case came up, the defendant accepted a plea deal instead of going through with the trial. Our host tried to spin this as an example of the justice system working, and that our presence was what convinced the plea deals to go through. I’m a little more skeptical of that, as it’s well documented that the vast majority of cases never go to trial in the first place, and that’s because DAs/Prosecutors push incredibly hard for plea deals instead of trials, usually by over-charging defendants with the expectation that they will plea out to lesser charges. I don’t actually like that the system works that way, but as a potential juror, all I can do is show up and hope the trial actually happens.
Once all three cases ended without a trial, we were dismissed. We all lined up to get our official letters confirming our service (to take back to our jobs and prove why we’d were out.) Our host continued to impress me by remembering almost everyone’s name as they came up to get a letter. I can’t imagine holding that many people’s names in your head after talking to them individually for less than a minute each. Over all my jury service was a bit of an anti-climax after all that build up, but at least it wasn’t an explicitly painful experience. Plus I got to get some reading done.
Stuff I’m Watching
It’s always a little touch to watch the final episodes of a TV series. It’s even worse when you’re watching a show that was cancelled after these episodes were made, but before the production knew about it. Which exactly what had happened with So Help Me Todd, a silly and slight legal procedural about a guy working as an investigator at his mother’s law firm. The show lasted two seasons, but really only one and a half with a strike-shortened second season. It’s not exactly a comedy, but the core cast of characters get up to a variety of shenanigans each week and while you won’t learn much about the actual practice of law by watching it, you’ll probably have a good time. The show takes the occasional mild creative risk, and isn’t afraid to challenge the status quo of the show in any given episode. All of which is to say that I think the show was a little too weird to survive at CBS. To be clear, the show is not weird. There is not any fantastical element, no aliens, no supernatural monsters, The biggest twists to happen are usually akin to someone coming home early. But CBS has a very limited set of criteria for tv shows they consider to be part of their brand. You know the ones. Shows like Blue Bloods, or shows that can be spun into franchises about dour people looking grumpy at crime scenes. Shows like the three different FBI branded shows, or the NCIS franchise, or Fire Country, which is getting its own extended universe next year with Sheriff Country (a terrible name in a sea of awful names.) Even So Help Me Todd’s name is too weird for CBS. It’s a pun (not a good one) for crying out loud. Do you think the network that greenly a 6th and 7th NCIS TV series (NCIS: Origins, coming this fall and NCIS: Tony & Ziva coming whenever, I don’t care) was going to being impressed by a pun? Anyway, the show is fun, which I can’t say for most of CBS’s other primetime programming.
I also finished watching Sex Education, which started life as a charming British show about the son of a Sex Therapist (played by Gillian Anderson) starting his own underground therapy clinic at his high school. By the last season it really wasn’t about that anymore, but it also wasn’t sure what it wanted to be about either. We followed these characters for four seasons, but by the end I wasn’t really sure why. There wasn’t a lot of overlap between them anymore and I couldn’t help but wonder why some were still on the shows, when others had been abandoned in previous seasons. But I watched it all, so there’s that. I expect more people will be looking into it over the years, because one of the main characters is played by Ncuti Gatwa, who is now on everybody’s radar as the current incarnation of The Doctor on Doctor who. It’s fun to be on the other side of the fandom for once, where I’m familiar with the Doctor’s actor’s past work before meeting them as the Doctor. I remember when the internet was digging up everything David Tennant had been in pre-doctor and watching it even if he barely made an appearance. That’s the only reason I ever watched the pretty terrible remake of the Quatermass Experiment. There’s every indication that Gatwa is going to be a great Doctor and so people will absolutely be rediscovering this show before long.
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