They day came and I got in the car and headed to the courthouse, which was in a town 50 miles from my home. I got to the address with about 20 minutes to spare and the first thing I noticed was that this was a Federal building for the Eastern Districts of Texas. The second thing I noticed was that all the men where wearing coats and ties. So, I look at the paperwork I had received and truly read it for the first time. A few lines stand out: - This is a Federal case.
- Men should wear a coat and tie.
- Jeans are not acceptable attire.
What do you thing I was wearing? No coat, no tie and jeans. This is staring out well. What are you going to do? So I park, gather my things and head to the front door. Not surprisingly, there are metal detectors at the entrance. I empty my pockets, remove my watch and belt and put my belongings in a plastic bin. The guard takes one look and tells me that my cell phone will have to go back to my car. What? No calls during breaks? No checking emails while things are slow? Now I realize that I did not read very far down my paperwork after all. I head back to my car thinking I am going to be bored to death. On the way back to the car I read a bit more on my paperwork and notice the bit about no cell phones in very large, bolded and red text. How the heck did I miss that? I put my phone in the car and noticed that I have a magazine sitting on the front seat. I am saved from epic boredom! I head back in. I empty my pockets, remove my watch and belt and put my belongings in a plastic bin… again. This time the guard looks at me and says no magazines or books either. He asks me if I read any of the instructions that were sent to me. I looked him in the eye and pointed to my attire as if to say, “What do you think?”. This is when I realized that the people at Federal Court do not appreciate my particular brand of humor. Once again, I headed back to the car. I tossed the magazine back in the car. I did not bother putting my belt on this time and threw that in the car as well.Guys, you know how most of the time we wear belts strictly for appearance? This is not most of the time. I needed that belt and realized it about half way from the car. By this point I had eaten into my 20 minute cushion and I needed to get a move on. All I could think of at this point was, “Pants on the ground, pants on the ground, Lookin’ like a fool with you pants on the ground”. If you have been living in a cave and don’t get the reference, please check it out (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tMwhl4IrPNc). This time I made it in with not trouble. The guard gave me directions to the courtroom. I got in the elevator and made small talk with the guy in the elevator with me. He was in a coat and tie and at this point I am feeling a bit uncomfortable. I started making small talk. I said, “I guess I missed the reference about proper attire”. I kind of gave me a smug look as if to say, “Moron.” I deserved it. Turns out that he was there for the case as well. Making more small talk, I asked him, “What do you think this clown did?” He just kind of shrugged his shoulders and did not say anything. It was obvious that he was not interested in chatting, so I just kept my mouths shut from then on.
The people at the court started everything off by putting us all in line, looking for our name on a role sheet and initialing that sheet next to our names. Simple enough. I got that one done without any issues. We then took our first break. Yes, break number one. I was just going to stay there in the courtroom, but they told us we had to leave. There are about 50 of us and we all headed for the hallway. There was another gentleman there who was not wearing a coat and tie, so I made a joke about him not getting the memo either. He laughed and that lead into a nice conversation. I was relieved being that I had nothing else to do. No laptop, no blackberry, not even a magazine. I asked the standard small talk questions: Where to you live? What do you do? It was a nice chat and before I knew it our 20 minute break was over and we asked back into the courtroom.
They did a role call and gave us all cards with numbers on them. They then asked us to sit in the order of the numbers of the cards. At this point the attorneys from the prosecution and defense enter the courtroom. We were not told that was who they were, but it was pretty easy to put two plus two together. Crap! The defense attorney is the antisocial cat from the elevator. I am playing that back in my mind at this point. On the good side, referring to the accused as a clown and asking his attorney what he thinks he did will probably not get me picked to serve on the jury. Now the judge comes in and gives us our instructions. He asks us all to stand up and say a few things about ourselves. Where we live, what we do for a living, what we do in our spare time, marital status and spouses occupation is applicable.
We got through everyone a lot quicker than I expected. Surprisingly, this was kind of entertaining. It was interesting to hear what everyone did and a little about them. Several people had been laid off, lot of people had several kids or grand kids and several people said scuba diving was one of the things they like to do in their spare time. My interest at this point may have been heightened by the fact that there was nothing else to do and we kind of had to listen to what we all had to say. At this point, both groups of attorneys addressed the group and asked several questions. Questions and clarification around things like circumstantial versus direct evidence, witness credibility, etc. The defense attorney spent a lot of time explaining. “Presumed innocent until proven guilty.” Wonder why?
This led into our second break. I struck up several conversations with my fellow potential jurors. We all knew a little about each other now, so ice breakers were easy to come by. One guy’s wife was a vet, so I asked where and that got several other conversations going. Another person overheard us and it turns out that she was a supplier for the wife’s vet office. Another person mentioned growing up in Midland, Texas. My sister and her family have lived in Midland for 17 years, so we chatted about that and how the town has grown over the last few years because of the price of oil. We all found lots to talk about and there were several of these kinds of conversations going on all around me.
All of this is a very long trail to get to my point about social networking. What would this have been like if we would have been allowed to bring in our laptops, phones, books, magazines, needle work or anything else we do to keep ourselves busy in situations like this? I would have found a quit corner and checked voice mail at work and made any necessary calls. I would have checked, responded and forwarded several emails. I may have even checked Facebook for updates and possibly changed my status and made joke about being on jury duty. If I had my laptop, I would have worked on a presentation I need to give later this week. Regardless, I would not have felt inclined to strike of conversations with strangers. Would everyone else have done the same? Would most of us had kept to ourselves if we were allowed to keep the devices that tie is to our jobs and social networks? I embraced the situation and met some very interesting people.In the end, 14 people were selected and I was not one of them. I left with the promise of a small check and the experience of getting to know some new people. Did it leave me with a sense of nostalgia, reaching back to the good old days and the way things use to be when people truly talked to on another? No way in hell. I would have much rather had my Blackberry and chatted with people I already knew through Twitter, or got some work done through email or updated my status on Facebook. What does that say about me? Am I antisocial? Should I be bothered? It does not bother me at all. I am happy with where technology has taken us and remain excited about future advances. I will embrace this new way of communicating and you will have to take my Blackberry from my cold, dead hand! OK, so that was a little dramatic, but I think you get my point.
