Back in college, my friend Jamie would at various random times and place suddenly put her hand up to her eye and sigh. "Eye karma" she'd say and then find the closest mirror to fish whatever debris got lodged in her cornea. While I do get my fair share of stray eyelashes and bits of lint in my eye, I suffer from another type of reoccurring annoyances.
I have jury duty karma.
In the past 11 years living in Los Angeles, I've been called in for jury duty three times. The last time was back in 2008 where I was put into a jury pool for a solicitation case and then dismissed after the jury was selected. This time around was different. I'd postponed my jury duty twice earlier this year, as each time I was called it coincided with an audition. After you've done your two postponements, you have to go in for jury duty or else. So, I went in last Thursday my usual jury duty mainstay, the Criminal Court building in downtown LA across the street from City Hall. I went into the holding room and waited. Usually, you sit in the waiting room and just wait until the end of the day when you are done with your service and then leave. Thursday was not going to be one of those days. After about an hour, I and 64 other unfortunate souls were called up for a case. The 65 of us went up to the 13th floor (foreshadowing?) and waited in front of a courtroom. After a ten minute wait, the court clerk emerged and told all of us that we had to fill out a questionnaire (all about gangs and gun violence) then report back to this very courtroom aat 10:30am the next day for jury selection. What? I have to come back?! I'm in the middle of working on Goofy Workplace Basic Cable Reality Show, slammed with unmoving deadlines and zero paid days off for jury duty. Grrreeeatt... I filled out the questionnaire, and headed into work.
Friday rolled around and after I made myself a nice breakfast (and listened to Stephanie Miller come out on her radio show), I headed downtown and made my way to the courtroom. All 65 of us jurors eventually showed up and were randomly assigned numbers. We then lined up by number in the hallway. I then texted Tom this:
Now lined up in the hallway a la 'Chorus Line'. God I hope I DON'T get it.
The clerk then said "Jurors 1 through 18 will be up in the box first." Guess which number I was? Yup, 18. I turned to #19 and said "Lucky..." He smiled and shrugged in that very knowing way.
We all filed into the courtroom and I took my seat as Juror #18. The judge -- an attractive and sharp woman in her mid-40's -- swore us all in and spoke at length about being a juror, blah blah blah. During this, I looked over at the defense table and saw three witnesses, each with their own attorney. After making the mental note, I brought my attention back to the judge who read off the charges: attempted murder and aiding and abetting involving -- surprise! -- gangs. My jaw dropped. Holy crap, this isn't some short case, this is the real deal. The judge then said the case would take up to 10 days. 10 days! Remember when I mentioned that I wasn't getting paid days off for this and I had all those deadlines? Yeah, I wasn't lying about that. My mind started racing, trying to figure out how I was going to meet all those deadlines at work while playing 12 Angry Men downtown.
The judge went through the initial interview process with each juror, mentioning people's professions, exposure to gangs, violence, etc. She then got to me and read my profession. "Ooooohhhh," she squealed, "reality television story producer!" My eyeroll to this was, I think, audible. Great, I'm thinking, I'm a target. She then asked me what kind of subject matter I've dealt with in my career, basically wanting to know if I dealt with any crime, gangs, or criminals. I said no. I also explained my work situation and the judge said that the attorneys would take it into consideration. Following her was the three defense attorneys who asked us 18 random questions about the law, gangs, etc. The few questions I got from them were general and genial. All the while as these questions were going on, all I could think about was logistics.
...I could get up super early in the morning, like 6am. Go to the gym, then go downtown for the trial, then at 5pm, slug through traffic and make it to Hollywood by 6pm, then jump into work and try to get the Rough Cut of my episode ready for the Fine Cut. Make it home by 1am, sleep a little bit...
After a 90 minute lunch break and some excellent pupusas, I went back into the courtroom and took my seat. A bunch of my coworkers were giving me some outs the day before. "Wear red -- it's a gang color!" "Tell 'em you don't like the blacks!" "You are 100% for the death penalty in all cases." The thing is I take the law and courtrooms very seriously. If I'm under oath, I'm not going to lie. Period. While I could have easily made up some sort of fib, I couldn't do it. Resigned to my fate, I slumped in my chair.
It was now the People's turn. The prosecutor in the case looked like Ichabod Crane, which is an unfortunate look if you are a man but it really did this DA no favors since she was a woman. She asked several questions and then got to me.
"Juror #18... Mr. Reality Television Story Producer," she smirked under her beak nose, "you realize that the witnesses' testimony won't be edited."
Lemme stop for a second. Here's the deal: just because I work in television doesn't mean I'm completely incapable of viewing the world through the lens of my job. You know why I'm capable of this? Because I'm not a moron. And upon seeing "Reality Show Producer", she saw a way of making of fun at my expense, implying that I'm a dumbass. She didn't say to the teacher "Juror #6, you know that the witnesses aren't going to be teaching you a lesson." Or to the software engineer "Are you unable to download that concept of evidence, Juror #10?" Needless to say, I was pretty offended.
Back to Ichaboda. "Juror #18, the witnesses won't be scripted ahead of time", she smugged. "Can you handle that?" I looked her square in her beady eyes and said "Yes, I can handle it. And honestly? A person's testimony is their version of the truth, from their perspective. It's an anecdote. So the real truth is something else. In my job, I take raw footage and I tell whatever story I want to tell. I can make a kid's birthday party look like the worst thing in the world. Same thing with someone's testimony: it's their version of things and the truth is somewhere beyond that." I then smiled. The three defense attorneys all leaned forward, one actually put his head in his hands. The prosecutor was not terribly pleased.
The jury selection continued. The first several jurors were excused and I was moved from seat #18 to the now-vacant seat #2. Number #2! That's exactly how I felt the day was going! I moped in my seat, trying to figure out how I was going to sleep for the next two weeks. More jurors were called, they were interviewed. And then, it happened.
Ichaboda stood up and said "The People would like to thank and excuse Juror #2." I lifted my head up and reflexively said "Really?" I then grabbed my messenger bag and power-walked my way out of the courtroom. If I moved any faster, I would have made a Jon-sized dust cloud on Juror Seat #2. I got my paperwork and my jury duty for the year had been done.
Moral of this story? Don't mock my job in reality television... 'cause I'll use it to do rhetorical jujitsu on your bony ass. Give it a rest, DA Crane; there's a headless horsemen who has a flaming jack o'lantern with your name on it.
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