Many people I know have emerged from jury duty with a renewed sense of civic pride and patriotism. Why, I even know someone who was inspired to go to law school after serving on a jury. (Hi, Sydney!)
But perhaps these people are natural optimists and patriots. What about the misanthropes among us? As for me, I emerged from Jury Duty with a renewed sense of the depravity and idiocy of my fellow citizens.
And no, sadly, I'm not talking about the Pauly Shore movie.
I went to a certain city in Massachusetts--I won't say which one, but the title of this post refers to it--and got kicked out of the half-empty juror parking lot and told to go "park under the bridge and keep feeding it quarters."
This was the best part of the day.
There was the expected waiting, and then I was chosen to sit on a jury. After spending the better part of four hours listening to really sad testimony (it was an illicit assault against a child under 14 case. Shudder), I got shunted off to the side because I was randomly chosen to be the alternate.
Well, I thought, five minutes while the jury debates this open-and-shut case. Instead, I spent an hour and a half in an empty, windowless room by myself. Then the jury came back, and I had to stand next to these people I had previously thought of as decent folk as they delivered a jaw-droppingly wrong and stupid verdict. There's all this symbolic standing and sitting in court, and I really wanted to sit down or maybe turn my back, but all I could do was hike back to my car as the alleged victims family stage whispered verbal abuse at us in front of the inattentive or apathetic officers of the court, ("I didn't get a vote!" I wanted to shout)pondering the depravity of the alleged offense and the incomprehensible miscarriage of justice I just had the misfortune to sit through.
