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Thursday, September 20, 2007 Last week, Wednesday: I found myself sitting in a windowless courtroom in Barre, VT, Montpelier's working-class twin city. My second day of jury selection. The first such occasion happened in July, me spending a warm, beautiful day in the big, sensory-deprivation chamber called the District Court of Vermont (Unit No. 3, Washington Circuit), along with nearly 50 other souls summoned to do the civic duty thing. It was supposed to have happened for me in early May, the day I got back from Madrid, but the two guys taking care of my mail -- good guys, normally very responsible -- didn't notice the envelope emblazoned with the big words JURY SERVICE, and I didn't find it until the morning after my return, when I was supposed to be there hanging about with the rest of the jury pool. A phone call to the courthouse got me the woman in charge, who accepted my explanation with good-natured kindness and rescheduled me instead of hitting me with the heavy fine the law allows in cases like that. I'd had a brush with jury duty once before, in Massachusetts. On a mild February day, I drove well away from Cambridge/Boston to lounge around a district court until the legal folk were ready to roll, then filed into a courtroom with the rest of jury herd for a bunch of Q&A. A drunk driving case, the attorney for the defense decided he didn't like something about my answers and they set me free, me skipping back out into what remained of the afternoon, feeling like I'd been let out of school early. And that was it -- simple, not terribly demanding. But in this small, green corner of the world, where so much about life is so agreeable, so reasonable, someone with a nasty sense of humor cooked up the requirements for prospective jurors. None of this one-day-and-you're-free rubbish -- once you're called, you must accumulate either three days of jury selection or three trials served. Not a total of three of either –- one or the other. Meaning you can potentially go through two days of jury selection and three trials, or two trials and three days of jury selection, before you're released from indentured servitude. Not reasonable at all. But that's the way it is. And it complicates life in a major, onerous way for those who get called. In July, three farmers sat and fretted about all the work they had waiting for them at home, not bitching about it but clearly stressed and knowing they would be detained for two, three, four or more additional days in the weeks to come. (One of them: a large, big-bellied, salt-of-the-earth type, skin weathered and ruddy from years of work out in the elements, dressed in clean work clothes, including a faded "Wilson's Heavy Equipment" baseball cap and pants held up by suspenders designed to resemble yellow measuring tape.) Courthouse personnel made an effort to communicate appreciation for the imposition, but without apology for the extreme commitment of time required of Last Wed. they picked juries for four cases, calling me to sit in three pools (of potential jurors, not of the wading variety). One was a domestic violence case. I was willing to serve but identified myself as having grown up in a violent household (true) and found myself not included in the final jury. The next case featured an individual defending himself on a traffic violation, an event that would have been worth witnessing just for the potential spectacle. The defendant had shown up dressed down, in a less than sparkling outfit that included a baggy, untucked t-shirt featuring a startling, oversized image of a bosomy female -- the message being that here was someone who could have cared less what we thought of him. Seeing what he wore to the actual trial might be worth the price of admission all by itself, I was ready and willing to be there. But the trial date was set for the day I fly back to Madrid, disqualifying me. The defendant in the third case turned out to be someone I knew (also defending himself) from the gym in Montpelier, someone I liked. Making me a bad choice for a potential juror, even if the date had worked. Once again, I skipped out of the courthouse a free man. [continued in next entry] España, te echo de menos. rws 3:20 PM [+]
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