My first 20 years in the US were as a green card holder, so any time I received a juror summons, I was always able to check the convenient little “I’m some kind of hippie commie who’s stealing jobs from Americans” checkbox. Now, as a law-abiding God-fearing AMERcan living in a nucular family, I’m out of excuses. The weird part is, I really like the idea of serving jury duty. I’d actually love to see the internal workings of a courtroom, get really into a case, debate the issues, and be part of the process. It’s the pesky “carving out the time” part that’s a little problematic right now.
The good part is, the summons waiting room has WiFi.
The bad parts are, it’s not free, it’s slow, and it drops connections every 10-ish minutes.
I’ll be here all day (unless I’m lucky enough to get called up soon and get eliminated), doing some work, maybe watching a little Slingbox, or, thanks to my friend Michael Gartenberg, playing Peggle (yes, I paid for it too – such a timesucker!).
UPDATE: time off for good behavior! I’m outta here.
surprisingly, you can get wi-fi throughout the entire courthouse (for a nominal daily fee). not surprisingly, the crappiest coverage is in the downstairs waiting room.
and “I’m an illegal alien and don’t speak English very well” is also not a proper excuse to duck serving on the jury. if anything, your peers will make you foreman for it.
Making racial slurs anytime you open your mouth is an easy way to get off the case though. Much like yourself I was excited to serve on jury duty early last year – getting to know how the process works and serve my country… it ended up being a really interesting criminal case that I was fortunately not “appropriate” for…
you’ll have to let us know how it went.