Notes on Jury Duty And How to Make It Fun

In the collective opinion of the vast and almost complete majority of American citizens above the age of age eighteen, few things rise to the level of scorn and disgust as jury duty. And for good reason. Jury duty is essentially what happens when you take some of the worst things about high school, make them legally binding, and add lawyers. Now ask yourself: What could be worse than that?

The answer is “a lot of things” – but that’s not the point. Because while you and your fellow citizens are herded through a metal detector and forced to sit for god knows how long in a large, painfully air-conditioned room with only copies of Redbook and Smithsonian to read, few things seem worse. In fact, it sort of feels like prison.

Jury duty’s perpetual status as an object of dread and ridicule is well-deserved. It’s also unavoidable. Even a cursory knowledge of economics and basic human psychology underscores the fact that without adequate compensation and incentive, its hard to convince a busy human being to do anything. Jury duty, predictably, and with few exceptions, does not provide that incentive. Sure, the mailings cite it as “your civic duty” and tend to overtly mention the ramifications of ignoring said mailings – fines, possibly jail – but it’s not so hard to see why those things fail to capture anyone’s hearts. One is vague and mostly meaningless legalese and the other is a threat. Who responds well to that?

With rare exceptions, jury duty is done begrudgingly. Complaints follow complaints, becoming the one thing that the jurors – who, if selected properly, present an accurate cross section of the population – have in common. They are bound by their misery and annoyance towards a system that sustains them and acts in their best interest. They are sixteen year-old’s peeved at Daddy for making them stay in on a Friday night.

But like that forgotten closet of board games that makes a Friday night at home suddenly and exponentially more bearable, jury duty possesses its own set of hidden amusements. Consider, for example, the potential fun to be had in imagining the trial’s judge naked under his robe. If nudity isn’t your thing, consider perhaps women’s underwear; viz. consider the possibility that there is strange sordid underbelly to the whole court system. Perhaps the prosecution is secretly sleeping with the defense, and perhaps this is something that all attorney’s are obligated to do prior to every trial. The trial, then, becomes one big theatrical exhibition of latent and suppressed sexual energies. And you are in the center of it.

Let your imagination go wild – but not too much because you should actually be paying attention. That’s why you stare at someone – and only that someone – for the entirety of the trial. Maybe the judge. Maybe the court reporter. Perhaps one of the court officers. Just think twice about staring too long at the defendant. You could then fall in love, and become instantly impartial. You could get kicked off the trial. Is this what you want?

Which leads to another game. This one mostly consists of you finding subtle ways to signify your lack of impartiality. For example, by sucking your teeth or making similar audible gestures of disapproval, you can very quickly divulge your distaste for anyone in the room. Another option is to find and wear a vaguely racist or insensitive shirt or hat. One reading “Fuck Da Police” could to the trick, for example.

The list goes on. The point is jury duty, like most things, offers its own opportunities for entertainment – you just have to stop complaining about it long enough to see them.