Jury Duty: The Jury Lounge

[IMAGE REMOVED DUE TO POSSIBLE CONTEMPT OF COURT CITATION]

Room 250: the Jury Lounge.

Inside here, I waited with about 100 other potential jurors. On walking in, I saw no one at the front desk… and was unsure what to do. Imagine walking into a large college lecture hall, and you find yourself suddely facing the entire classroom, only you’re the last one to walk in and everyone else is seated. That’s sort of what it felt like.

I plopped down in a chair by the wall… and after a minute or two, noticed that a spot was open at a nearby table. I figured I’d get out Liz’s computer, and moved over to grab the spot.

Most of the chairs and tables in this room were incredibly nice. Nicer than I anticipated, actually. I imagined some sort of dirty DMV-like waiting area with plastic chairs, all of us bunched into uncomfortable rows of perpetual waiting. In reality, the room was quite spacious, and really pretty nice.

At the table, I got to talking with two other women who were sitting nearby. One woman’s name I never learned, and the other’s turned out to be Colleen. We all chatted about the process some, where we travelled from. It was very pleasant chatting with them, and made the entire jury duty experience seem a bit more personal.

Originally, I arrived at 8:30 AM. Around 9 AM, they started to register people. A big line was formed, and everyone dropped off their summons and filled out a quick form. Shortly after that, a group of 20 people was called, and taken to another floor.

And, the waiting began.

So far this morning, I’ve been trying to get on to the Internet. I see a “Free Public WiFi” network, and can successfully connect to it… but there was no juice. I even went so far as to talk with other folks with laptop PC’s, and asking if they’ve got a connection. The response I got was that the connection was spotty, and that I needed to keep trying.

After a little while, I remembered the old man. The kindly, elderly gentleman who didn’t know how to operate a mousepad. The kindly man who closed down some kind of auto-install.

The entire morning, I was half-convinced that the old security guard shut down some sort of automatic login on the Mac. In my head, I kept thinking “Why would they have a network here titled ‘Free Public WiFi’ and then not have it active?” I also kept thinking “Did I just get worked by a senior citizen?”

Security was supposed to check any cameras, but I got away with having mine in my backpack. However, I felt that taking it out and shooting the room would have raised some kind of red flag… so I decided to try to use PhotoBooth instead.

[IMAGE REMOVED DUE TO POSSIBLE CONTEMPT OF COURT CITATION]

My goal here was to get the room, but it’s mostly me. I was trying to be inconspicuous about the whole thing, and wanted to try to get a photo of the Jury Lounge interior.

Around 10 AM, another group was called. This time, it was around 50 people. A group gathered by the door, stood around for about 10 minutes, and then was told to take their seats again. We were warned about possible delays, in terms of pre-trial meetings, and this appeared to be one of those situations.

Fast forward another 30-45 minutes, and a third group was called. My friend Colleen (who was sitting next to me) was near the start of the list; I also ended up getting called, near the end. We got into two lines, and headed out and up to the 22nd floor.