Order in the court

I got summoned to jury duty—originally for late June, but I got it changed to late August because of my surgery. (Evidently you get one postponement; there was no further option to reschedule.) Start date was Wednesday, 30 August.

The deal is, you call (or check the website) the evening before the assigned date to see if your jury group will be needed. This is what I got:

So I think my obligation this time around is discharged. (Although I’ll keep checking, just in case.)

But it got me thinking about the concept of being entitled in our justice system to a trial by a jury of one’s peers. I don’t think it works out that way, in practice.

Because in reality, I’m betting that most jury pools pretty much everywhere in the country look like me: older, retirement age, probably fairly secure socio-economic status. And that would not be representative of the population, and most likely not be “peers” of people in civil and criminal trials.

I get it—retirees have the time and are not beset by monetary worries if they don’t show up to work. They can go to the courthouse and fulfill their civic duty.

If you work for a fairly substantial company not in the retail, healthcare or hospitality sectors, you may be able to serve on juries. A lot of firms pay employees who are summoned, the same way they pay for National Guard or Reserves obligations. But if you work for a mom-and-pop operation (or you are the mom or pop), you probably can’t get time off; it wouldn’t be paid, in any case, so you probably couldn’t afford it.

(And, BTW, if you are a janitor, barista or transportation worker for any of the big tech companies that happily pay their professional staff to answer the call, you don’t benefit. Because you’re a contractor working for a vendor company and you only get paid for the hours you clock in. Moreover, the rapacious, greedy company that signs your paychecks has no back-up staff, so if you don’t show up for work, than Googlers or Microsofties don’t get shuttled to the office or their restrooms cleaned.)

So the jury pool mostly comprises White, well-educated professionals (or retirees of somewhat more diverse ethnicities) who lose no compensation for the time they are at the courthouse. This, to my mind, is problematic. I don’t know what might solve it—municipalities guaranteeing jurors their lost wages would help, but it doesn’t answer the issue of people who can’t even take sick days because if they don’t show up, critical tasks don’t get performed.

I also expect that, as long as courts get enough bodies from retirees and professional-class workers, they aren’t going to do anything to improve the system. As far as they’re concerned, it ain’t broke, so why spend effort/money to fix it?

So I didn’t serve this time around. Next time, maybe.