I could postpone no more and reported for jury duty this morning. For this round, I was at 100 Centre Street, across the way from Walter, the “snowy-haired clerk of jury room 1121.” Instead a guy named Lenny was my clerk, curt but funny and with the requisite accent for having been at this job for 20+ years.
My duty involved a lot of sitting, mostly in a courtroom as prospective jurors were called at random from my group, seated in the jury box and vetted by attorneys from both sides and the judge.
The case centered around attempted first degree murder of several New York City cops, so the same question the lawyers managed to ask a dozen different ways was, “Can you, prospective juror, recognize that even a cop can lie, forget or deliver inaccurate testimony?”
There was bickering. The judge kept interrupting the attorneys. Philosophical arguments flew forth. Those prospective jurors plainly dissatisfied they’d been chosen were eventually dismissed and replacements called forth. My name was never called, so I sat in the back of the courtroom on a hard churchlike bench from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., with an hour break for lunch (soup dumplings, cheap and piping hot, from New Green Bo), and listened to the same questions and arguments over and over again.