Modern Imprisonment
Tuesday, May 27th, 2008The judge said to us, “Only free people are lucky enough to perform.” He was speaking to a group of fifty of us who were about to go through the long, tedious motions of voir dire in a Ft. Worth criminal court. I tried not to laugh out loud.
Not being registered to vote, I was surprised to have received a jury summons in my mail six weeks prior. After cursing about it, I found out that in Texas, they grab people from the drivers license rolls, since there aren’t enough registered voters otherwise. No wonder–even if I didn’t view voting as an act of violence, I wouldn’t risk going through the horrid experience of jury duty again by daring to vote.
I read through the list of disqualifying questions, looking for an out. No dice, either I would have to lie, which I will not, or I was stuck going. Now, I do happen to believe in the merits of a legal system, just not one enforced by a government; I would have been much more willing to acquiesce were it to be a civil trial.
Instead, I ended up in front of a man being tried for narcotics possession. Geez, what a waste of taxpayer money, but at least that provided me with my out. When asked if anyone would be unwilling to sentence the individual, I was the second one with my hand up (the first guy said, “no, I know guys in prison, and no one deserves that horror”). “I don’t believe in drug laws,” I said, and was allowed to sit down, and eventually went home, not having to serve on the jury.
But that was after two days. I had to drive 22 miles each way, and after a full morning the first day waiting in a sea of voters and drivers, I was told to come back the next day and report to my appointed criminal courtroom. That’s 88 miles, or roughly 4.5 gallons in my old Explorer, about $16 of gas money at the time. I had to take off work both days. In Texas, your employer doesn’t have to pay you a thing; I’m fortunate to work for someone who did, and I’m very thankful for that. For my involvement, I got paid $6 for day one, and $40 for day two, which technically does not even cover the expenses of lunch and mileage. Seems like blood money, too.
Despite the judge’s words, I felt anything but free while enduring this onerous obligation. I was forced to abandon my job for two days, forced to drive a long distance, forced to go through a metal detector and proceed, unarmed, into an area full of armed guards. I could not communicate with the outside world, nor could I speak my true mind for fear of further imprisonment. There were no clocks and no windows within the courtrooms. The court administrator threatened us, indicating that armed men would show up at our doorstop if we neglected to return the next morning.
I felt badly for the defendant, but was far more interested in extricating myself from imprisonment, and that’s perhaps the worst crime of all. Some of the people that the defendants need most on the jury are doing everything they can to get out.
