The Chronicles Of Jessica

It was nothing like this.

Three weeks ago I was called for jury duty here in Washington. I got called once for jury duty in NYC, right before I was headed down to Shenandoah Shakespeare for my first contract there, so I had to show up and explain that I was headed out of town for work for nine months, and by the time they called me again I didn't live in NYC anymore. So that worked out. This time I was fairly certain I wouldn't get picked because, well, who gets picked? It seems like no one I know ever gets picked. I think I can sort of see that - why would you want an actor on a jury anyway? You know they're just going to be making Law and Order and John Grisham movie comparisons inside their heads the whole time.

The whole thing reminded me of like a compulsory day-long audition for a play that's going to be produced at the DMV. You don't have anything better going on but you really don't want this part. First I got on the wrong train to the courthouse and wound up at the Pentagon at 8 o'clock in the morning. I loooove when that happens. You're reading your little commuter paper and looking at cute pictures of the Obama's dog and suddenly you realize you're going above ground and entering Virginia, at which point there's nothing you can do because you're over a body of water. I don't know which one. The bay, maybe, or it could be a river. This isn't a geography lesson, people, it's a jury duty anecdote.

It took 15 minutes for another train to come in the opposite direction by which time I was late. I thought this would be a big deal and it wasn't at all, because even after it took another 15 minutes to pass through the metal detector, I joined the ass end of a line that had at least 150 people in it. I found this strangely comforting. "No way am I going to be one out of 12 with alllll these people here," I thought. So I waited for a very very very long time and then they gave me a badge of some kind and sent me to another area to wait for a very very very long time. It was a big conference type room with rows and rows of chairs and two big screen tv's. After they showed a brief video about the justice system and what a privilege it is to serve, blah blah blah, they put on a movie. It was "We Are Marshall", which is a football movie. I don't know anything about football, but it seemed like it wasn't a bad movie. Some guys died on a plane, then they had to put together a brand new football team out of the like 5 guys who didn't die on the plane, and they hired Matthew McConaughey to be the football coach and Jack from LOST to be the assistant football coach, I think. I didn't get to see how it ended, but I'm sure it was poignant and triumphant.

So they called a bunch of numbers (I was 826) and then they took those people into a hallway and lined us up, and then someone else came out and put us in different lines, and then finally we were herded into the courtroom with the judge. The courtroom was a big disappointment. Judge Judy has a more austere courtroom than this. It was all beige and faux wood panelling and the judge didn't even have a gavel.Boooo-ring! How are you supposed to call people to order if you have no gavel? Just ask them? Pffft.

We all had to go individually in front of the judge and the attorneys and defendants in this separate room while they questioned us. There were two defendants and the charge was armed robbery and murder in the first degree. You know, light fare! There were probably sixty of us in the courtroom and I was about halfway down the list. Every now and then someone would come out of the separate room and grab their coat and bag and just leave the courtroom, but most people came out and sat back down in their seat. What did the people who got to leave say? I wish I knew. So, we sat there for a million years, then they sent us to lunch, we sat there for a million more years, and then finally I went in to see the judge. He asked me some pretty vague questions but he didn't give me any openings to say anything incendiary like, "I don't care 'bout no laws but God's laws!" or "The goverment are imperialist pigs!" That might have worked to get me sent home. But you can't just start yelling "f*&% the police!" without a cue of some kind.

Finally everyone came back out and then they started dismissing people and conferring at the bench and dismissing more people. The people they wanted they were sticking in the actual jury box area. And when they would confer they would press a little button that created this white noise over some speakers so you couldn't hear anything they were saying to each other. A brilliant invention! I wish I had one of those in real life. I could be out to dinner with Paul and a bunch of people:

"Excuse us a moment.. (presses button) Is it me or has Jeff's ass gotten huuuuge?"

"I know, and his neck looks like a ham, huh?"

"It really does. He must be depressed. (presses button) Yeah, let's get another calamari!"

It was like watching a game show where you feel really really sorry for the winners. Eventually they had 14 jurors in the box, after they had done their mixing and matching, and there was this one woman in seat number two who had been there the whole time. I thought she was toast. And then, at the absolute last minute (it was going on 5:45 at this point) they dismissed her and said, "Juror number 826 please take seat number two." And just like that, I was on a jury for a murder trial.

What happened next is a whole separate entry. But two things are clear: A.) I was right not to pursue a career in law, and B.) I must have a metal plate somewhere in my body that I don't know about, because I set that detector off every damn day for the next two weeks.