Admit it. Your knowledge of the American legal system comes from "Night Court", "Law & Order", and various Grisham novels.

Judges don't bang gavels as often as you'd think.

My big adventure began several weeks ago with a notice that I, Juror #1763, was to report to be a petit juror on January 16th, 2001. I diligently e-mailed various people at work to inform them of my upcoming absence which didn't stop them from scheduling me for meetings all week long.

There's a number to call just to make sure that you're needed for jury duty. I called only to find that the cutoff number was #1793. Yep, lucky me just barely made the pool. So it was official. I had to go.

Day One.

I'm driving to downtown Paterson, New Jersey, on Monday at 9:30. Traffic is backed up for blocks. Little do I know that I was one of two hundred and fifty other citizens summoned to jury service that is attempting to get into the same parking garage. A sheriff's officer hands me a map to an alternate parking garage in an even scarier part of town. I exit the car park -- it is now 10 o'clock, the time I'm supposed to be at the courthouse, seven blocks away. Can they cite me with contempt of court if I'm fifteen minutes late?

Nope. I'll discover as the week goes on that there's real time, in which five to ten minutes is actually five to ten minutes, and there's judicial time, where five minutes is approximately fifteen to thirty.

I am now in a large room with about 250 other people who are trying to get out of jury duty. I've received several bits of advice on that from colleagues at the office -- things I could say if I want to get out. My cousin is a patrol officer with the Chicago Police Department. If something happens (I know not what), that would say that and be disqualified. However, I don't want to try to get out of jury service. If I was arrested and going to trail, I would not want my jurors to be people trying to weasel out of their civic duty. If it comes up, I'll let them know of my relationship to a police officer and, if there is a problem with it, I'll get to go home early.

The Undersheriff starts about forty-five minutes late and says his prepared "welcome to jury duty" speech. He's a very good public speaker. "Has anyone served five years ago? Ten? How about fifteen? Good, good. Well, nothing's changed. You still get paid five dollars a day." Later on he says something about free coffee and tea in the jury assembly room. "'The cafeteria charges sixty-five cents for a cup of coffee,' the sheriff told me. 'That's almost a day's pay.'" Big laughs.

We are all being sworn in by a woman who acts like she doesn't want to be there.

We reassemble after lunch. I'm one of the lucky ones. I've got a book with me. Unfortunately, I finish _The Catcher in the Rye_ sometime around two, when they call the first batch of jurors. I'm stuck reading a two-year old copy of _New Media_ magazine.

Every twenty minutes or so, they call another batch of sixty jurors. It is now just after three and I'm finally called. We walk over and sit down in a courtroom where a judge reads to us from prepared texts for forty minutes about the importance of jury duty. Something is familiar about the judge, but I just can't place it. We all fill out a questionnaire.

Fourteen of the sixty are called to sit in the jury box -- I am now Juror #5. The case has the following charges: Aggravated Assault (which is purposely or knowingly causing bodily harm to a police officer who is acting as a police officer), Evading (running away from the police), and Resisting Arrest (doing something to prevent a police officer to effect an arrest). We know that there will be anywhere from four to six police officers testifying on behalf of the State. When the judge asks if anyone in the jury box is, is related to, or knows a police officer to please raise our hand, I raise my hand. So does nearly everybody else in the jury box.

It seems like jury selection has taken forever. It is now four-thirty and we recess until tomorrow morning. I am still in the jury box. Out of the original fourteen people, only six of us are still in the jury box. The defendant is black and there are only two other black people in the original 46 not chosen. I think the defense attorney is trying to get at least one of them up there.

[Aside: The defense attorney and the prosecutor both can excuse potential jurors from the jury box. They have a limited number of kicks where they don't have to explain why they dismissed the potential juror. By this time, the defense attorney had kicked ten people, the prosecutor had kicked two.]

-Faux "more coming" Pas