Jury Duty

The jury assembly room, located in the basement beneath 6th Street, shook and rumbled every several minutes from the weight of vehicles above ground. A man with short gray hair in a dark-purple polo and olive-green shorts pecked away at his Blackberry beside me. Women seemed more likely to engage each other, clustering in small groups of 2-3 while men largely sat by themselves, reading or doing other solitary activities.

Televisions hanging against the ceiling and the walls displayed a slide show. A Windows 98 task bar remained at the bottom of the screens. “Please DO NOT use the chairs as footstools,” one slide read. Another: “We currently have 20 cases pending. Each one is a potential jury trial.” Other messages included reminders to throw away trash, separating recycling into the appropriate designated receptacles, and jury duty factoids: “Average length of a trial: 3.5 hours. Average length of jury service: 3.4 days.”

Monday began with 30 cases — a light load compared to the usual 60-80 cases, cautioned a woman in the jury assembly office — and whittled down to 15 by 11AM.

Outside, there was a heat advisory for record-breaking May temperatures. The humidity hung heavy on my skin upon stepping out, but downtown it was breezy when I got off the bus in front of the Hennepin County Government Center. The jury assembly room was air-conditioned. I felt chilly and foolish in my t-shirt. I bought a 10 oz. hot chocolate for $.70, uncomfortably hot to hold — much less to drink — for at least 10 minutes.

I had brought along my iPod, cell phone, and a copy of Infinite Jest, an old paperback edition with yellowed pages. I had reservations about starting the 1,076-page novel the week before I began taking a summer anthropology class, but surely if jury duty consisted of sitting in this big room waiting for your name to be called from 9 A.M. to 4:30 P.M. (minus the 1.5 hour lunch), I could finish it within a week.

But I felt as if I had won the lottery when my name was called for a criminal trial shortly after 2 P.M.