Raise your hand if you’re going to claim hardship.

Raise your hand if you’re going to claim conflict of interest.

Raise your hand if you just freaking love doing your civic duty!

This is the first time I’ve been called to jury duty in my dozen years of eligibility, and as a former devotee of John Grisham books, I was actually excited to go. I wanted to send the Mafia men to jail. I wanted to be on the Runaway Jury. I wanted to be The Rainmaker.

I was called for the first panel on the first day and walked into the courtroom with my head held high, doing my best to look like a model citizen for voir dire. And it worked, I think, until I saw the plaintiff and almost started laughing. And then the defendant – I had to stifle a giggle and catch myself before I accidentally waved hello to him.

The judge inspected us, the panel, very closely, then gave a lecture on civic duty and admonished us not to talk about the case among ourselves or with others. Then he gave us a brief rundown of what the case entailed… Dr. Defendant, a surgeon from my hospital, is suing Dr. Plaintiff, another surgeon from my hospital, in a civil suit demanding actual and punitive damages for various nasty infractions.** I’m not sure why this struck me as funny – especially since the charges were pretty serious stuff – but I giggled again.

The judge went on to explain that a large panel was sitting for selection because the case involved many prominent people and odds were high that a lot of prospective jurors would have had some contact with one or more of the parties. Giggle-giggle. He read the list of witnesses. Snicker! I know Dr. Witness and Dr. Other Witness too! And as much as I was interested in the case, I knew there would be no way I’d get to sit on the jury and therefore figured the judge would just send me away immediately so I could go convict some evildoers in another court somewhere.

Except he didn’t.

The panel waited in the courtroom for hours while the judge and counsel questioned each of us privately in the chambers. I stared at Dr. Plaintiff’s head for awhile. The man seated behind me started to snore. It occurred to me that the chandelier over the judge’s podium looked like the Scales of Justice. I read 200 pages of “The Plot Against America.”** I counted 8 sprinkler heads on the ceiling. Dr. Defendant scratched his mustache every 5 minutes; he must have had something stuck in there. I giggled again.

After a morning of doing nothing, a lunch break with people I ended up not really liking and a gyro that I did, I was finally allowed into the judge’s sanctum to explain exactly what the heck was so funny. I explained my professional knowledge of the parties involved and my daily proximity to them. “We’re not buddies or anything,” I admitted, “but I could be in a meeting with either one of them any day.”

I should have said I went to dinner parties with these guys, but the counselors pried: how closely did we work? Did I have personal opinions of them? Professional opinions? Did I have any foreknowledge of this matter? Could I be fair and impartial even though I knew who they were?

“I would always try to be fair and impartial to anyone and would make my decisions based on laws and evidence, not personal feelings. But look,” I said sternly, “those guys don’t know me too well now, that’s the truth. But if you allow me to sit in the jury box where they will stare at me for – how long did you estimate? three weeks? – then when they come back to work, they WILL know me as That Girl From the Jury. They are friends with my boss. And I will live in fear.”

The court reporter laughed. The judge mumbled and wrote something on a sheet of yellow paper, and I was dismissed. It didn’t really seem so funny anymore though. Why hadn’t I been sent home? They couldn’t really consider me for this, could they? Taking my seat back out in the courtroom, I was a little nervous. they’d put me on the jury, all right, and whoever lost would use me for med student to practice on in the cadaver lab.

My savior came in the form of another laugh, one that I couldn’t silence in time, when my friend C walked into the courtroom. He went up to the defense table and hugged Dr. Plaintiff while I snorted behind my hand. Looking back at me, C gave me a weak smile as I put the pieces together and realized that my friend was Dr. Plaintiff’s son. Hah!

I told the bailiff I needed to see the judge again and was escorted back. Grinning widely, I announced to the judge and counsel what I had seen. They questioned me briefly about how I knew C – he is also a doctor – and what I knew of him. “Would you say that you know Dr. Plaintiff’s son in the same professional manner as the other parties?” one lawyer asked gravely.

“No sir. I’d say that while I know the plaintiff and defendant in a purely professional manner, my relationship with C is such that I’d go out to the courtroom and high-five him right now, and wish his dad good luck.”

The juror rests, Your Honor. I giggled a little when I walked back into the courtroom, and when I was finally dismissed, I did give C a covert low-five when I was walking out.

——————

** Come on, this is public record. You have no idea who I’m talking about, I promise.

** E saw me putting that book in my bag that morning and asked me if I thought it wise to sit around reading a book with a swastika on the cover if I really wanted to get picked for a jury.