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Vice Blog

DEAR VICE - JURY DUTY


Hi Vice,

I’m writing you from the juror’s lounge of the Brooklyn courthouse, where I am currently wedged between a Hasidic man and a woman reading possibly the world’s thinnest paperback. I can’t see the title, but the thing is seriously about 15 pages long, eight of which she’s dog-eared. All in all it’s a pretty heavy bus station vibe. As you may have already surmised, I am bored out of my fucking mind. I’ve spent the past four hours in the same seat, looking at crap on my laptop. This isn’t that different from my usual weekday routine, but somehow the setting makes it feel torturous and stultifying.

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When I first got in here this morning, the clerk put on a video called "Your Turn:" Jury Duty in New York which made it seem like the whole thing was going to fly by and we’d all end up on crazy murder trials by the end of the hour. It was co-hosted by Ed Bradley and I think Diane Sawyer (I have a hard time telling anchorwomen apart) and used some History-Channel-quality reenactments to demonstrate how jury duty is better than being dunked as a witch. Then they jumped to the present to demonstrate how juries are made up of all sorts of people, not just old white ladies. The thing was cut like a techno video, so it was kind of hard to get pictures in the half-second each person was on screen.

This guy had one of those 90s industrial haircuts where you pull the hair back into a ponytail and shave down the sides.


This was the prosecutor. The picture doesn’t do justice to how skeletal and terrifying she was.


The defense attorney had pretty amazing chops. They almost met under his chin.

Once the video was done, the clerk asked anyone who didn’t speak English to line up at the front of the room to be discharged, then he cocked his head really sassily and said "If you don’t understand English, how’d you know to stand up?" and everybody who’d stood up had to sit down all sheepishly. That was a pretty good trick. Then a women repeated the announcement in several different languages and a bunch of people of different ethnicities formed a line they could have used for one of those "Look how diverse New York is" shots they always put in movies.

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After the ferreners were cleared out, the clerk started reading names and again it seemed like things might be moving along pretty quickly, but then an hour and a half passed with nothing but the sound of typing fingers and ringtones (one guy’s keeps going off and it’s a home-recording of somebody singing "I Just Called to Say I Love You" that sounds like Betty Boop after surviving a nuclear bomb).  Nobody is talking to each other except for the Jewish women who apparently all know each other.

OK, we’re about to get a lunch break so maybe an update later if I'm not deciding some poor soul's fate. Before I go here are the best juror names I’ve heard so far (as pronounced by the clerk through loudspeaker static):

Ghuljasneen Jennenoff

Matthew Maw

Cola Tone

Elon Vest

Vera Fagger

Tappis Catari

Jane Passion

Ruford Duckman

Alzwair

Lionel Tenesaka

David Hendershotch

Winnie Weffel

Elaine St. Bernard

Rylou Lewfeld

Libby Zigga

Xiley Butts

LESS DREMENS