Monday, November 13, 2006

How everything I knew about Jury Duty was wrong, and how it changed my view on the system. Part 3.

Another thing I learned from my jury confinement is that I am the only one on the planet who watches television. And if people did watch - it was always the History Channel. The judge made a joke on the first day after asking a prospective juror "how he got his news" - he said people always say they watch the History Channel.

I didn't realize at the time how significant this comment would be. As a matter of a fact, no one watches the news, so I think they should take it off the air immediately.

Now I know people are thinking to themselves "HEY, I watch the History Channel"! And I'm betting they do.... but statistically the amount of History Channel watchers was highly improbable. Grab 50 people off the street. Any street - and I bet the History Channel rarely comes up. Yet in this group 95% of them were History Channel watchers.

Since the judge let the prospective jurors drone on for as long as they wanted - towards the end sometimes people would admit to watching CSI. I was wondering which one, because CSI NY just sucks, and CSI Miami makes me want to claw my eyes out. We still have 10 episodes on Tivo from last season just in-case there is a meteor collision with the earth and broadcast television ceases to exist.

Personally I have deviated from my reality show whoring to be a big fan of Dexter. You got to love Showtime for actually realizing people want to utilize their HD televisions.

One woman actually admitted to be a court TV watcher, but deemed CSI "too Hollywood". But I had to respect her for being different.

Another thing I deemed unsettling was the judge. From the very first day I noted that he cracked a lot of jokes. It isn't that I expected the place to be completely stodgy, but he cracked a lot of jokes. So many in fact it seemed like he was working towards a second career in stand-up if this whole judge thing didn't work out. About 70% of the jury audience would laugh uproariously at his every attempt at humor, and this would happen really quite frequently.

Now you may think I am being an asshole about it, and under normal circumstance it wouldn't have been notable - but 2 of these guys were probably going away for life. The judge would crack a joke, the juror audience would laugh, and I sat there thinking " if I am accused of these crimes I want the judge to be a little more serious". This also set up a completely different feedback loop in that jurors being questioned would act out in an attempt to get the juror audience to laugh as well.

To be continued.....

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