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"They Also Serve Who Only Stand and Wait"


I had been looking forward to the Jury Duty assignment, partly because it is an important, although dreaded, part of how we govern ourselves, and partly because I had an unblemished record of never having been selected to serve on a jury.  I wanted to know what it was like.

As often happens, the first call of jury duty was postponed about a week, but then the second week came around, and I reported.  Hundreds of us took our places in what was called the Jury Assembly Room, where we completed a questionnaire, and waited.  The "Jury Assembly Room" sounded like a place where juries were constructed from parts, and that was about right.  The actual assembly happened in a courtroom upstairs.  The deconstruction preceded the construction.  We were divided into three groups, something like the medical process of triage:  those in pretty good shape, those who were hopeless, and those who should get first attention, because it would make a real difference.  I was assigned to the group for whom nothing could be done, so we waited longest to be examined.

My modest zeal to be a good citizen was immediately tempered by the judge's announcement that this was going to be a serious trial, to last at least a week, and probably more, because the charge was not shoplifting or catcalling.  I immediately got religion, and began to pray earnestly and often that there would be a plethora of honest and unbiased folk in groups one and two.  I was even heartened by discovering that having a peace officer in the family might cause the defense lawyers to reject me.   "Good Ol' Troy!", I thought.  "He had to become a State Patrolman to serve as a medic on their helicopters!"  And was my Grandmother not in danger of being called to eternal glory, about sixty years ago?  And was I not a primary caregiver to Helen Keller, Michael's deaf and blind dog?  Why, just yesterday, I had let Helen Keller out to pee in the yard, again!

We spent a lot of time standing in the hallway outside the courtroom while the judge and the lawyers adjusted the course of justice.  At lunchtime, I walked over to where I knew they served wine, and where they had a real tree in the courtyard:  not the Court courtyard; the Old Town Artisan courtyard.  Lunch cost twice what the County paid us stalwart citizens for performing our civic duty, but it was worth every farthing.  Or shekel.  Or dollar.  Even though it was an undistinguished Cobb salad.  Citizenry has its price.

I was not assigned to jury duty.  I was not even personally interviewed for jury duty.  I was just finally told to go home; that the wheels of justice would grind on without me this time, as they had done every time, and that I was to be thanked for doing my part.

It is my part that discourages me, even though, this time, it would have messed up my tidy life and plans.  All I have to do is show up, as the law requires, and the judge, the lawyers, the scintillating bureaucrats who hand out questionnaires and ball point pens and who tell us where to stand and serve in the hallways take one look at me and assign me to group three, and tell me to sit in the back by the wall, all immediately recognizing that justice will not be served by asking me to vote yea or nay impartially on rum runners and pot smokers.

John Milton said it; that we also serve who only stand and wait.






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