Thursday, June 14, 2007

Scenes from a Courthouse

Some fun things from Jury Duty yesterday -


1. It only took me 45 minutes door to door! And I had to go to downtown L.A. Plus, it only took me 20 minutes to get home.


2. The sweet older gentleman that "just wanted to let the court know I have been a professional drummer for 60 years and apparently I now have bad hearing." You should read that in a nice yelling type voice. It was really cute.


3. I sat in front of Judge Ito all day yesterday. Alas - I was never picked to be questioned as a jury member. But I did leave really enjoying Judge Ito, he was very fun, very professional and it seemed that everyone there enjoyed working with him. Judge Ito is also a fan of giving speeches, but they were very good speeches (and informative!) so I enjoyed that as well.


4. I saw Phil Spector in the hallway. Apparently his trial was going on next door. Dude is a freak. And short. And apparently requires the use of two of the biggest bodyguards I have ever seen. Who were dressed in matching suits. Which made me giggle.


5. At the end of the day - Judge Ito gave this very eloquant speech thanking us for our time and letting us know this fact -

If everyone in L.A. just did their civic duty, people would only be called for jury duty every SEVEN years. As it is, we are now called every 12 months because they have to mail out 1.5 million summons in order to barely get the 120,000 people the Los Angeles court system needs in order to allow us the right to have a trial by our peers.

I was floored.

Now, I have my issues with the justice system as a whole, but I had a really great experience for my first time serving jury duty. I really wanted to sit on this jury and I am still a bit sad that I wasn't picked for it.

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