I go to court

Back in April, I received a thick red and white card summoning me to fulfill by civic duty as a juror. Had this happened a few months earlier, I might have celebrated the chance to take a rare and government-mandated rest from work -- away even from those third-arm cell phones and persistent e-mails that have antiquated the meaning of the word "vacation." But as timing usually goes, I had just welcomed Shadow home

Still sleeping on training pads, having accidents like it was his civic duty, and crying every second he was alone, he simply couldn't be left or pawned off on anyone. So I invoked my right to one postponement, hoping that just maybe the courts would forget about me altogether.

Silly me to think I could pull the wool over Uncle Sam's eyes. I spent the past two days at the Westchester County Courthouse, pawning Shadow off on my mother on Monday, and placing him for the first time in daycare on Tuesday. Neither went extremely well.

I returned early Monday afternoon to a very disobedient puppy. Essentially, during my absence Shadow employed the quintessential "you're not my mommy so I don't have to listen to you" toddler act on my mother and brother. What he got in return was a day at the local animal hospital. It was the first time for all of us, and I was comforted at the thought of his being safe and in the hands of professionals, who promised to feed him and had a large yard where he would play. Upon picking him up, however, he raced out like a convict whose shackles just broke. He was an absolute tornado of energy, which made me worry that he'd sat in a cage all day. Immediately upon escape, an unusual number and frequency of bathroom breaks made this fear an almost certainty. And I am mad about it. Finding a good daycare provider is turning out to be harder than I thought. But I'll keep trying. Maybe Uncle Sam will reimburse me the $25...

Which brings me back to my original subject. I completely understand the need for ordinary people to serve on juries, and I have no objection to doing so, but the communication and the my-way-or-the-jail-cell attitude could use a little tweaking.

In Westchester, citizens are allowed one six-month postponement, and exemptions no longer exist unless you can't speak English or have a serious medical condition. (It took the administrative judge, the commissioner of jurors, and a secretary 90 minutes to say what I just said in one sentence.)I have a puppy. That's not a big deal. But women with infants are required to serve. Unemployed or self-employed people are required to forfeit what salary they could scrounge up, in order to pay for parking, gas, and possibly child- or pet-care for days or even weeks. In just two days I spent $60 in parking, gas and care; imagine that plus lost salary over two weeks.

During my service, I encountered a recent college graduate who had to cancel her job interview -- a holy grail in the middle of an economic crisis that has pitched an impervious membrane over the current workforce, keeping out the flood of new diploma holders -- in order to sit in a room for 4 hours, then be dismissed and told to return the next morning to continue sitting and waiting. Does anyone not see where the system could use a little work?

At the same time, those who actually want to sit through a trial are tossed into the mix with those missing their best friend's impromptu wedding. Why not have a database of people who genuinely want to serve (with biases and conflicts properly vetted, of course) and fill the remaining spots with those who would rather be elsewhere? Why not offer a small fee to volunteers but still restrict how often they can serve to avoid "serial jurors?" It wouldn't cover the costs of transportation and childcare, but hey, throwing people a bone once in a while can go a long way. (Would you really want your life hanging on the opinions of miserable people who are pissed off that they're losing money and time at your trial to begin with?)

It is the 21st century, after all. If I can fill out a bunch of bubbles online and get a list of 20 cities in which I'd be happiest living, why can't Americans fill out something similar and let a computer figure out the best days to assign who where -- and dismiss those whose profiles are already screaming "undesirable." Goodness knows we've got enough state employees and politicians sitting on their hands in Albany -- maybe they could pitch in.

I won't even get into my problems with announcing personal information to a room full of 65 strangers, including the one in the defendant's seat. But if anyone with any power happens to be reading a girl-meets-dog blog with a flimsy tie to politics... does corralling 1,400 people a week into a holding room like cattle, where they wait to be deployed the moment a judge decides he/she's going to trial (or sent home when everyone settles out of court) really sound well thought out? Is it really so much more important to inconvenience 1,400 other people over them?

To sum up, Shadow was pretty darn pissed at Chris and I last night. And after being pawned off and abandoned for two days in a row (he probably thought we gave him up yesterday), neither of us can blame him. But today he seems much happier. Like me, maybe this whole experience has reminded him how good he's got it, and how important that is to remember even when the little things get under our skin. For the next six years, at least I have my freedom.