I am sat in the jury waiting area and the jury officer is explaining how there are now four microwaves available for use and they’re kept exceptionally clean and that they will get taken away if they’re left dirty. Her preamble is going on a little too long now and my mind is wandering. The microwave monologue is cut short as she realises she needs to be elsewhere, so she plays a government video outlining how to be a juror and what to expect. She leaves in such a rush that she fails to notice that one of the two televisions isn’t working and has switched itself off. 50% of the 60-odd jurors cannot watch the video and can only hear the audio from the other television. No-one, including me, does a single thing to rectify the situation. The apathy is palpable.
I spend the rest of the morning alternating between my book, my phone and Bargain Hunt, although the TV is again threatening to switch itself off due to no-one interacting with it for two hours. I strike up conversation with a nice retired lorry driver. He tells me about his son, who had just suffered a heart attack at the modest age of 42. I ask him whether the heart attack cause might be hereditary. He contemplates and then replies “no, I don’t think so.”. Before going on to tell me that he himself had also suffered a heart attack earlier in life and his father had died from a heart attack. I’m desperately searching for some overtones of irony or sarcasm, but nothing. It was delivered in such earnest tones that I can only assume that he doesn’t understand what hereditary means. “He’s a lazy bugger” asserts the lorry driver. “Fair enough” I respond.
It’s now 1pm and nothing has happened. We break for lunch and I silently thank those who told me to bring a book.
2:30 and the jury officer is now wearing a robe. I sense something is about to happen. It is! We’re summoned to a court room, but not before she mispronounces a juror’s second name as “moron”. We walk though corridor after corridor before coming to… another waiting room. There are twenty four jurors and only twenty seats. More waiting. Finally we’re led into the court room which is surprisingly large. The judge tells us some very basic facts about the case and I am confident that I know nothing of the defendants or the main people at play. Twelve juror names are read out at random by the clerk. He has a very lazy eye and I am concentrating on this so much that I fear I won’t hear my name if it is read out. However I do hear my name and take my seat in the jury box, alongside lorry driver man. I hope, for the sake of justice, that the case does not involve any complex family trees or medical terms.
The judge describes how sitting on a jury is important and people often find it stimulating. He outlines the hours: 10am-1pm, an hour for lunch and then 2-4pm, with morning and afternoon breaks. The wheels of justice turn excruciatingly slowly. My GCSE revision timetable had more rigour. The judge has more points of law to pontificate upon and we’re dismissed for the day and told not to come back until 2pm tomorrow, having spent a grand total of 30 minutes in actual court.
Pages of book read: 120
Time spent in an actual court room: 30 minutes
Time spent waiting: 5 hours
Four days of tedium 