LA County Jury Duty, Part 2

Hot and more hot. Rolled out of the sheets and into the heat super early to fulfill my civic duty. Yup, I had to jury serve. Checked in to my old stomping grounds at the LA County Courthouse. Apparently Phil Spector’s creepy trial was also going on there but I didn’t see any hooplality.

There was a bit of drama in the jury holding pen, however. Some young whitey insisted ignoring the jury supervisor’s instructional speech (although I confess, I was zoning out since I’m such a pro) for the LA Times and got berated over the PA system. About a half an hour later, he decided get in on some cell phone action while taking up residence next to a sista’. (Appropriate cell phone activity is allowed.) The next thing we all knew, sista’ was yelling at whitey about his rudeness. Sista’ then reported whitey to the supervisor who announced over the PA, “While cell phones are permitted, harassing jurors with inappropriate language is not allowed. If you continue to harass your fellow jurors, the court sheriff will arrest you.” Most of the holding pen were like WTF? I didn’t hear whitey’s conversation but sista’ was clearly outraged.

But then whitey and sista’, in two separate groups, were assigned to trials and the holding pen was boring again. I suffered for the next 3 hours until noon when we were excused for a 1.5 hour lunch break. Fires of Hell, was downtown LA hot! I sweated over to the Museum of Contemporary Art, which is FREE for jurors but closed on Tuesdays and Wednesdays.  So I checked out some weird stuff in the gift shop. There were a couple of cool graphic print shirts peddled for outrageous prices.

I returned to the holding pen and watched some Judge Judy. At 2:30 I freaked out when the supervisor came over the PA for a “special announcement”. The last “special announcement” at 2:30 I received ended in a 10-day circus. I mean trial. But this special announcement was to simply tell us that we were all cleared to leave; the courts were good to go with their jury panels. THANK YOU JESUS. And I mean that in all sincerity. I seriously rolled the dice on this one as I am scheduled to be on a jet on Wednesday. So wow, I must have done something good in a past life to have my buns saved.

To pay it forward, here’s a few more tips I picked up today:

BEST WAYS TO AVOID JURY DUTY 2

• “I hate lawyers” Defense – a Frenchie was sent back to the holding pen for declaring that she could not be objective because she hated all lawyers.

• Inappropriate Dress – According to the supervisor, jurors have been thrown out in voir doir selection for wearing shirts with huge lettering stating COPS, POLICE and ALCATRAZ. Bloomin’ Brilliant.

See lots more tips in Part 1.

Also, saw scary, scary smoke billowing from Griffith Park around 3:00 driving on the 101 back to the valley. Big, blazing forest fire.