5.25.1994

Today was an irritating waste. I spent five hours at the county court house this morning because I got slapped with jury duty. The timing could not have been worse. Tomorrow evening I start my first shift at the Optical Coating Lab. Since I have to work an extended graveyard shift the jury duty in the early part of the day is going to cut into my sleeping time. I tried to seize every opportunity to be dismissed or excused. I even asked for an extension to come back some other time, but the nerdy judge was being a cock about it. The case is a big deal, it's capital murder of a sheriff's deputy and the case was moved here from another part of the state. So they're not letting anyone out of the jury selection process. Two Mexicans executed a cop while he was placing them under arrest and putting them into his police car. Somehow even though they were handcuffed, one of them was able to unholster the officer's gun and then shoot him in the neck with it. The two then fled the scene in cuffs but were captured a few days later.

The first opportunity to try to escape jury duty came when the judge allowed us to present him with Hardship excuses. I filled out one of them stating that I had to start a new job the next evening and that I was working an extended graveyard shift. Twelve hours long starting at six in the evening and ending at six in the morning. I stressed that financially I could not afford the five dollars a day that the court allows for compensation. The judge told me to call my employer and find out if they would pay my wages while I was to be on jury duty. Some employers do pay for it, some do not.

I left the courtroom to make the call and I kept my fingers crossed that they wouldn't cover it. As I walked through the main hallways of the court house back to the juror's room I realized the possibility of the Optical Coating Lab being that cheapskate and not covering jury duty were pretty slim. The company is large enough that they probably have their shit together. I got on the payphone and called the head of the Human Resources dept. and was disappointed with her reply. They would defintely pay me while I was stuck on jury duty. Fuck.

To pass the down time in the courtroom I brought a book with me to read. It's "The Thin Man" by Dashiell Hammett. I've seen a bunch of The Thin Man movies starring William Powell and Myrna Loy. They've all been really funny so I figured reading one of the books might be kinda fun. So far it hasn't been too bad and I didn't realize the author had also written The Maltese Falcon.

After a few hours of hurry-up-and-wait the judge gave us all a thirty page questionnaire to take home and fill out. He said because there were so many people they were pulling in for this case that the prosecution and defense lawyers were not going to have enough time to cross examine every prospective juror in the court room. The questionnaire was supposed to speed everything up considerably. I briefly thumbed through some of the questions and it's all pretty weird stuff. I can tell they are looking for people who are racist or hate police officers.

I really feel the need to get myself thrown off of this case as soon as possible, so I called up a good friend of mine that's a lawyer and asked his advice on how to get bounced off the jury selection process. He suggested I respond to the questions with completely whacked out answers. The more bias and screwy shit I can put in the better he said. That way neither legal team will want me on the jury. It seems a little risky to me, but what the hell. I'm real nervous about trying to start a new job and the very same week can't come in because of jury duty. It just doesn't look good. At least I don't think so.