Hoarded Ordinaries

Today’s jury duty lasted one half day. After spending the morning in the jury pool, my fellow would-be-jurors and I were sent home at lunch time, the presiding judge explaining that the criminal case we’d been called for had been settled, with the defendant pleading guilty and accepting jail time for repeated DUIs.

Of the three times I’ve been summoned for jury duty, this is the second time I’ve been sent home midday. (Interesting enough, the one trial I served on was also a DUI case.) According to Massachusetts’ policy of one day, one trial, sitting in a jury pool fulfills your duty to serve even if you aren’t actually impaneled on a jury. Simply showing up and being ready counts as serving.

Before the presiding judge dismissed us, he explained that having potential jurors present often nudges defendants to settle with prosecutors or plaintiffs. The threat of a trial, in other words, sometimes nudges parties to settle out-of-court. Although it might seem frustratingly unproductive to summon a group of people to simply sit in a room reading, working on laptops, or scrolling on their phones, courts don’t know how many jurors–or, more importantly, which jurors–they’ll need until a group of random people gathers in person to either wait or go through the jury selection process.

So after all the anxious energy I spent packing my jury bag with a loaded Kindle, puzzles, and So Many Snacks, I spent only a few hours reading and checking email before I returned home, my civic duty done for another three years. Although I didn’t actually eat any of my snacks, it was reassuring to know I had them just in case I needed them. With both potential snacks and potential jurors, they also serve who only stand and wait.

Tomorrow I have jury duty. Because this is the third time I’ve been summoned, I know the greatest determinant of how well your jury duty goes isn’t what you do at the courthouse but what you bring to the courthouse.

The first time I was called for jury duty, I spent the morning in the jury pool, then I was dismissed at lunch time after they’d impaneled all the jurors they needed that day. The second time I was summoned, I was impaneled on a jury for a DUI trial that lasted several days.

Whether you sit in the jury pool or sit on a jury, jury duty involves a lot of sitting. You wait to be called, you wait to be chosen, and you wait to be dismissed. Courthouse staff try to make this waiting as pleasant as possible–if there’s something you desperately need, there’s probably a bailiff who will be tasked with fetching that thing–but at the end of the day, you’re spending hours in the bureaucratic equivalent of a waiting room.

Because of this, as soon as I got this current summons, I started making a list of Things To Bring to Jury Duty. Ahead of tomorrow, I’ve packed my jury summons and ID, a hoodie in case the courthouse is aggressively air-conditioned, and a water bottle. I have a charged and loaded Kindle, a spiral-bound book of crossword and word-search puzzles, and a notebook, pens, and pencils.

I packed chewing gum, mints, and a quart ziplock bag full of snacks, including granola bars, cookies, and chocolate. I have ear plugs in case there is a noisy TV, a headset in case I want to listen to music, and a phone charger in case my battery gets low.

Since I might be sitting in a courthouse all day, I packed my inhaler, bandaids, Pepto-Bismol tablets, extra allergy meds, and a red, white, and blue assortment of over-the-counter painkillers: ibuprofen, acetaminophen, and naproxen. And just to be safe, I packed COVID masks, wet wipes, and tissues, because you never know what you might need when stuck in a room with random strangers.

Reviewing the list of things I’m carrying into tomorrow’s jury duty, I realize I sound like a mom packing for a child’s first sleep-away camp, minus the bug spray and sunscreen. Spending the day waiting for a jury assignment that might never happen is bad enough. Having everything you need for any possible eventuality makes this uncertainty a bit less maddening.