Reluctant Jurors Deliver the Verdict--in Absentia

Of the 81 people called to downtown Superior Court on Tuesday to explain why they had ignored repeated jury-duty summonses, only 13 actually showed up and told why it was they couldn’t be jurors:

I’m a convicted felon. I’m not a citizen. I don’t very good the English speak. I’m the only druggist in the drugstore--all reasons which would have excused them, had they put them forward in the first place.

Not one stood up to say what jurors have been saying by their absence for years:

“Your Honor, I didn’t answer my summons. While I always vote and willingly pay taxes and never drive alone in carpool lanes and take seriously my obligations as a citizen, I do not find anything in jury service but:

” . . . the indignity of being shunted around like a Big Mac on the hoof, through dim, dirty hallways and into balky elevators, to wait for--nothing.

” . . . the pointlessness of being given the boot because I went to college, or because I read something more challenging than People, because I don’t think ‘The X-Files’ is a documentary.

” . . . the humiliation of being scolded by a judge because my company pays for only 10 days jury service--as if I drafted that policy myself.

” . . . the dreary waste of spending eight hours times 10 days in stifling rooms, in a chair whose design violates the Geneva Convention, if I’m lucky enough to get a chair at all.

” . . . the viciousness of being used as a human billy club to get defendants to plead, once they get a look at the blood-lust glint in 12 pairs of eyes.

” . . . the outrage of finding that if I am chosen for a major trial, my private life is invaded by jury consultants, down to my magazine subscriptions and bumper stickers, as if I myself were on trial.

“Yes, Your Honor. I received a jury notice. Because our landfills are overflowing, I very carefully put it in the recycling bin. But I did not answer it.”

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The potential jury pool in Los Angeles is like a deceptively lovely lake, seen from afar by thirsty travelers who descend upon it--only to find it is saltwater. Of the 4 million names on the county’s potential voter rolls, culled from voter and driver’s license lists, most are not juror material, for legal or medical or financial reasons.

So in a county that goes through jurors like a head cold goes through Kleenex, the need is so desperate that at 6 o’clock one evening two years ago, a judge sent out bailiffs like press gangs, onto the streets and into a restaurant, in search of jurors.

You ought to be able to feel about jury duty as you do about voting: Maybe it’s not the best set of choices, or the best system, but you do your bit to make it work. But you get kudos for voting, while all you get for jury duty is commiseration that you were too dumb to slither out of the net.

To make an example of the most flagrant jury-jumpers, a $1,500 fine was levied Tuesday against each of the 68 no-shows out of the 81. Why not just jail them for contempt instead? I hear that the TV is better and the chairs more comfortable over at Twin Towers than in the jury room.

Fines may improve attendance, but not attitude. A fine won’t bring in the jury-dodging professionals, the M.D.s and the Esquires for whom a $1,500 levy is little more than an amusing story to tell the guys before tee time. A fine won’t make the patriotic pulses stir in the regular guy whose common sense and workaday wisdom make him the linchpin of the law.

The worst juror I ever heard of was on the Oliver North trial. She so despised civic matters that she ran to her room and slammed the door when her mother turned on the news. But the lawyers thought she was perfect: detached, indifferent, devoid of curiosity--a blank slate for them to write upon. That sort of juror is the very reason we need the other sort of juror, the one who isn’t showing up. Take jurors seriously, and they will take jury service seriously.

In a service economy that promises to deliver your pizza in a half-hour or it’s free, state law will soon require a juror play-or-pay: You get on a case on Day One, or you don’t get called back for a year. Los Angeles court administrators are already trying to beg off, but in this Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti is bucking his own staff. Says the man who got summoned to jury duty himself last year, “Just do it.”

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Two things will come of this column. I’ll get another round of true-jury horror stories, and I’ll probably get a jury summons in the mail. I can’t wait. The last time I served, I had 10 leisurely days to do nothing but fill out my Christmas cards.

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Patt Morrison’s column appears Wednesdays. Her e-mail address is patt.morrison@latimes.com