Until recently, I figured the reason I’d never been called for jury duty was because my summons had gotten lost in the mail (along with my invitation to the Vanity Fair Oscars party). But then a summons finally arrived, and I began fantasizing:
I’d be put on a juicy case—nothing too violent, but one with intense psychological twists and dramatic finger-pointing in the courtroom. Obviously I’d be forewoman, and I’d wield my power, as a friend who once held the position put it, “like a besieged despot.”
For a woman who spends her days bribing a toddler to accurately aim for the potty, it sounded thrilling.
On my appointed day of service, I got stuck in traffic on Rockville Pike and ran three blocks from the parking lot to the courthouse, arriving at the stroke of 8:30 a.m. I took the elevator and stepped confidently onto the designated floor. Then I ran out of the building and into the correct structure next door, hoping none of my fellow jurors was watching and questioning my leadership abilities.
“Good morning!” the jury greeter said after she took attendance. “We have a few trials on the docket today that are expected to last a couple of months. Does anyone have a problem with that?”
As hands were thrust violently into the air and I considered faking a heart attack, the greeter laughed and said she was kidding. Jury duty humor! So far, I’d been treated to stand-up comedy plus my unplanned reconnaissance work had led to an important discovery: The snack stand at the building next door sold mini-Peppermint Patties.
Next, we watched a video suggesting that our faces should be chiseled onto Mount Rushmore because we were upholding the tenets of democracy simply by sitting in a large auditorium in Rockville. I tried to ignore the fact that the copious praise reminded me of the high-pitched sentiments that come out of my mouth whenever my toddler reaches the potty in time.
Then we sat back in our chairs and waited. I sneaked a glance at my watch: 9:10 a.m. Newspapers rustled open. Someone yawned. Sensing the vending machines in the back of the room might be feeling lonely, I went to visit them.
Some people were finally called into a courtroom, but my juror number was 102, and there were only two trials that day. Even for a non-math major, the evidence was clear: I’d be warming the same chair for eight hours.
Since my service was so anticlimactic, I decided to ask some friends and neighbors about their jury service experiences. Turns out, I was the lucky one.
One of my former classmates at Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School told me about getting stuck on a medical malpractice case—for faulty hair transplants (tell me the jury wasn’t convulsing in laughter during that trial).
Then there were the jurors who tripped and crashed into evidence displays; the juror who announced to the judge that she had “small bladder issues” and therefore couldn’t serve (it didn’t work); and the Gaithersburg resident who entered the jury room for deliberations only to hear the foreman announce that his family was going to Disney World, and that he was ordering them to reach a verdict by that Friday.
(Naturally they accommodated him: “We were more scared of him than of the defendant,” the woman says.)
One Chevy Chase resident served in a trial where the entire jury had to accompany a smoker outside on a chilly day because the bailiff said they needed to stay together. (“After six-plus hours of being stuck together in a room with strangers arguing about the semantics of our legal system…I probably wasn’t the only one who also considered taking up smoking that day,” the man says.)
But at least they got to leave the trial behind when they left the courtroom. That wasn’t the case, so to speak, for a woman who served on the trial of a man accused of defacing a neighbor’s property. A few months after convicting him, the juror went for an ultrasound during her pregnancy—and realized that the defendant’s wife was sitting next to her in the waiting room. (Luckily, the wife didn’t make the connection.)
Of course, those jurors got a good story out of their experience. I never even got the chance to serve. Nor did the prospective juror who got excused because she was too busy that day. It was, her mother called to explain, the prospective juror’s first day of kindergarten.
Sarah Pekkanen recently came out with her third novel, These Girls (Washington Square Press). Her website is www.sarahpekkanen.com, and she can be reached at sarah.pekkanen@moco360.media
