June 08, 2004
Jury duty, day one: over
Got selected to a jury pool for a criminal trial scheduled tomorrow. Great. So now I show up, and wait to be asked all sorts of questions. It will be at least another full day in the crapper. Or worse, I could make the cut and get locked into a trial... indefinitely.
Difficult to describe the inefficiencies of our legal system's jury selection... Get hundreds of people in a large room for 2 days. Only use a small percentage of them... tell the rest, "Thanks for wasting two days with us, here's $10."
I would think you could develop a master pool, and pre-select sub-pools for trials -- there must be a better way than the current iteration. Outside of the basic inconveniences, taking 300-400 people away from their daily jobs/activities/whatever has to have negative impacts. Compensating them only $5 each per day is ridiculous as well.
Oh well. I am but a cog in a larger machine. I will obey. *yawn* Boring as hell, too. :)
Posted by tsg at June 8, 2004 04:47 PM