Every year about this time I get this grinding feeling in my stomach when I get the honor of being summoned to serve on jury.  The honor of course is comes via a valid California Driver’s License or being a registered voter.  I am somehow being rewarded by the Superior Court system with a command performance in the presence of the state’s legal system. And to serve at no charge for at least one day per annum or if I actually qualify for a jury to be paid a paltry fifteen dollars a day plus thirty-four cents per mile travel expenses. I usually respectfully decline the invitation by phoning in and praying that they don’t need jurors that week. However my most recent “invitation” to serve “demanded” my attendance with the threat that if I skipped this year’s compulsory service– that failing to appear when summoned, “may subject [me] to a fine of up to $1,500.” This got my attention.

I believe that people need to have fair trials and that the average citizen of this community is actually equipped with enough common sense that among twelve of us a reasonable decision or verdict may often be reached, if the true facts are admissible in the court room. What I really object to is the manner in which we the people are coerced by the threat of judicial intimidation to serve, how jurors are herded like so much cattle into court rooms and the massive waste of time judges spend on dumbing down the process– as if they were explaining the Fifth Amendment to fourth graders. I do object.

I object not only to just the little indignities of being treated like potential criminals upon entering the doors to our halls of justice, (I had a altercation with security over whether or not the stack of newspapers I possessed had to be scanned for weapons or the impersonal treatment of being relegated to a JID number upon signing in), I object to the entire premise of the jury room video that with all the patriotic zeal of an US Air Force commercial, pitches us “liberty and justice for all.” Liberty and justice for whom  I muttered?

Clearly my liberty has been diminished by this mandatory obligation to this involuntary servitude without compensation for my day of service while everybody else in the Long Beach Superior Court building, from the security people at the doors to the judges and the janitors are being paid way more than minimum wage, not to mention the $450 per hour lawyers. Shouldn’t they, too, all be asked to volunteer when a jury is being called?

The inequities are only exaggerated by the chasm that exists between those inside the legal system and those who are being used by it. Juries have more in common with criminal defendants and civil plaintiffs than they do the judges and the lawyers who profit from it.

Even the standing form of the reading of a criminal complaint is flawed and inaccurate–The People of the State of California versus Defendant Doe.  In reality the State of California is a legal entity or corporation that was created by and founded for the benefit of “the People” and as such purports to represent us, on occasion, but in reality the only “People” represented in the court are the jurors themselves who have not brought any charges whatsoever against the defendant.  We the People are there only to have a fair hearing of the evidence, to witness the fair execution of justice and to keep a skeptical eye upon the legal instruments that we have created. The prosecution is the State who has brought charges against the defendant– who is presumed innocent until proven other wise.  It compromises the legal process by confusing the State with The People–my argument is that the two are not synonymous.

This confusion of terms is only made worse by the rambling and abridged reading of said complaints by jurists. In one civil case I experienced, brought before Judge Meyers in department 11 this week, it was clear that she either couldn’t read reliably from the court document or was so ill prepared as to be almost incomprehensible as to the core issues of law. Either could have been a possibility. I was dismissed after she learned I was a journalist. In the second panel I attended, in the court of Judge Rodriguez, department F, the honorable jurist bored the jury pool to tears with simplistic anecdotes and elementary school legal explanations that the bailiff actually fell asleep during the long-winded road tour of judicial privilege.

Judges get to say pretty much anything they want to during these jury selection proceedings.  They often do at the expense of boring a room of 65 potential jurors who are forced to listen, in this case, to a hodge-podge of admonishments, half-baked diatribes biographical legal episodes, most of which could have been dealt with more efficiently if the prospective jurors had just been given a pamphlet and then filled out a questionnaire that they signed swearing it to be true.

In fact the whole Superior Court jury selection process is so antiquated and broken as to make it almost useless to the average citizen in society today. At its core it is both an aggravation and a penalty for being a good citizen.  Mandatory service once a year is ridiculous, we don’t even get to vote that often.

Juries are basically made up of three categories of people– those who get paid for jury service, those who are self employed or who do not get paid for jury service and those that don’t care if they are paid or not because they are retired or not the sole bread winner for their family. Jury pools should be organized from the start based upon these three categories– people who get paid for serving get trials lasting four to five days; people who are self employed and not paid get one to two day trials (the judges know how long a trial is going to take in most cases); and the long-term criminal prosecutions should be relegated to either volunteer jurors or to people who simply have the time. But none of them should be paid a paltry fifteen dollars a day! That is an embarrassment! An insult to the general public!

Furthermore, defendants have a right by law to be judged by a jury of their peers, which should mean by people directly in the communities from which they come. The inconvenience to serving on a jury some 15 to 25 miles distant is a breech of this right for the defendants and a damn inconvenience to jury-unless you are living in rural Montana or perhaps Modoc County. The Long Beach jury pool I experienced came from as far away as Manhattan Beach, Norwalk and Huntington Beach to the south and then we were told that we might even be called to sit a jury back in San Pedro, if they called, and that we’d have to figure out our own transportation if this happened.

My gawd why don’t they just call up when they need a jury in San Pedro and give me a choice of dates! Is this too much to ask or is it just beyond the genius of the legal minds of the Superior court system to do something based on common sense, common courtesy and respect for other people’s time?  

Unfortunately, the legal system as it is in this state, if not this nation, is based not upon respect for the law but upon fear and intimidation by the general public of the law.  This is best expressed in the bulging over-populated state prison system, which is now going to cost us some $7 billion to fix and expand, while school teachers are fired.  None of this makes much sense to me anymore and though most of you who are called to serve will never stand up and say it but I will– I object your honor on the grounds previously stated above! Either make the system work or don’t send me a summons.