Come to the Front Desk Please

Once upon a time, I was summoned to jury service. Like clockwork every two years. I never shirked my civic responsibility and once sat as a juror in a criminal trial. Back in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the Bronx County jury-duty experience was a bit different from today’s, I discovered, when I received a summons—my first in three decades—last month. For starters, twenty-first century technology didn’t exist back then. Clerks weren’t behind bullet-proof glass with laptops and scanners at their disposal. Fittingly, my service played out in a newer building—the glass-paneled “Hall of Justice”—and not the aging, main county courthouse on the Grand Concourse. The latter, where I previously served faithfully, is still operational, but no longer directly behind the since demolished and rebuilt Yankee Stadium. Changes on many fronts.

So, not only was I in a more modern location for jury duty, but I was subject to a more modern orientation. Thirty years ago, prospective jurors were lectured—hectored even—that jury duty was a duty. Employers were not obligated to pay their employees while serving—and don’t you forget it! Accept the responsibility and be responsible, including showing up on time. There was zero tolerance for tardiness. “You’ll be turned around and sent home,” the jury clerk intoned. “And marked absent and absent for the entire day.” Fast forward to the present and lateness, it seems, is no big deal. People were checking in more than an hour late without penalty.

Nowadays, when entering any government-related building, the first thing that leaps out at you is the pre-entry screening process: metal detectors and the wand. My last jury-duty date—before this year—was in April,1993, when folks came and went as they pleased at the courthouse. No metal detection required. In fact, a memorable line from yesteryear’s orientation was “Anyone carrying a gun, come to the front desk please.” This command never failed to elicit chuckles from prospective jurors. The orientation of the past, too, was devoid of contemporary identity gibberish and sans—believe or not—any mention of “non-binary.” The current male-female bathroom situations in the “Hall of Justice” mirror the times, I suppose—i.e., one can call on whichever biffy aligns with his/her/preferred pronoun “gender identity.” What could possibly go wrong?

This go-round, I was summoned for one voir dere, where the judge and respective lawyers ask questions of prospective jurors. A panel of sixty or so men and women was brought to a courtroom in pre-trial of a man charged with murder in the first degree. What was conspicuously at odds from past voir dere’s, I thought, was the initial query posed to the assemblage: Is there anyone who would find it impossible to sit for an approximate one-month trial? Save for twelve individuals, including yours truly, the remaining cast raised their hands and were excused no questions asked. This was once a pause-button matter. On a case-by-case basis, it necessitated approaching the bench and conferring in private with often unsympathetic judges and attorneys.

But that was then and this is now. After thinning the herd, the twelve of us were questioned—with the aid of a shared Ronco cordless microphone—for possible selection to the jury. In the end—out of approximately five-dozen people called for the panel—not a solitary soul was selected. We were all dismissed, too, after serving two days on jury duty and wouldn’t be summoned again in the Bronx for at least six years. That’s what the powers-that-be said.

What, pray tell, has changed? The numbers don’t add up. Two days’ service, mass dismissals without a fuss, and see you in six years. I served for nine days and sat through five voir deres—never picked for an actual jury—in my first jury-duty tour, then five days after that and three days after that. Lastly, I sat through a week-long trial as a juror. Pay was $14/day plus carfare back then. Today, it’s $40/day, no carfare, and the bathroom of your choice. Oh, did I mention the big screen TVs in the jury assembly room? I hadn’t seen a Family Feud episode since Richard Dawson hosted.