Visiting a Land that Time Forgot!

It's the first day back from the holiday but I have jury duty today. Scheduling it this way is in and of itself quite an insult to how businesses and people function but this is only the tip of the iceberg. So, I guess I will just have to let off a little steam. This jury deal happens to be one of my pet peeves and while I may exaggerate the situation some for emphasis, it is a sad process. You see I have a jury summons for the local county where I've lived since 1976. Let me be clear, I am one of those who do not mind serving. But what I do mind is the complete lack of technology, organization, and any other vestiges of process that exists within the jury selection process.

In our county we meet in a theatre because of the need for multiple juries. Up until a couple of years ago they didn't even use computers to process prospective jurors. They at least now have a computer to check you in but it pretty much is only to validate your summons notice. There will be some 350 to 400 people show up out of perhaps 500 who were summoned. We will wait around until Jethro and Uncle Jed decide to get started. There will be a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth over the need to be excused but unless its really serious most people will be forced to stay.

Then a judge will get up to explain our role, swear us in, and give a very patronizing speech about how the system can only work if citizens are willing to participate and how that we are the most important element in our system of justice. I happen to believe in our system but please don't tell me I'm the most important part of how it works. Not when all the staff and the judge have parking spots reserved under the courthouse while we walk six blocks in the rain. They are citizen servants, we are citizen servants, but obviously we are not the MOST important citizen servants.

Want to show people respect? How about making everything that happens regarding this entire process work to the convenience of those who have left their jobs and their homes to come and serve? How about demonstrating the importance of people and their participation in the way that systems are provided and how they work and in how effective the entire process is carried out?

In my county I am from an area that provides probably 80% of the revenue for the entire county, one of the richest in our state. The rest of the county is for the most part still rural. Yet, I have to make a long distance call to find out if I am still required to serve. I'm not complaining about a fifty-cent phone call but it is the idea behind it. I am proud to serve along side my fellow citizens who show up in overalls and use a spit cup for their Redman chew. I am most happy to stand up and be counted for the justice we all hold dear.

However, I despise a system that is by design insulting while somehow it attempts to make its archaic and sloppy features as in some way to be endearing. I despise the patronizing way in which the county employees coordinate this program. I have been selected to serve on a jury more than once in this county. I have served as the fore person on a very serious case in this county. In the end there is some reclaiming grace to know that a defendant has received his or her day in court and has been tried by a jury of peers but the process itself stinks and it doesn't have to be the way it is.

I always leave knowing that if any other enterprise of any kind on the face of the earth operated the way this organization functions, then they would have no customers and no business. Okay, enough of my complaining. Now it's time to take a ride on the Reading back into a world that time has forgotten! More later……………..