Sexism in the City, Part One: I object.

So, you're gonna get to read a lot of my random thoughts about the jury system, now that I've spent an incredibly long and frustrating time getting to know it (and now that my AMAZING SHOW AT THE KODAK is over and I can begin to breathe again). We're gonna start with something that happened during the first two days of my service, the voir dire days. (Ahhh, the voir dire days.)

Now, overall, I quite liked the presiding judge in my courtroom, and found him even-handed and kind and he got lots of points with me for apologizing very sincerely one time when he thought he had reacted over-harshly to a mistake a lawyer made. However, he did one or two things that really pissed me off, one being to kind of humiliate me, but we'll talk about that another time. The thing I want to describe here didn't particularly piss me off, but I did notice it and think about it a bit. I'm pretty sure that it is unintentional and that if it were pointed out to him, he'd fix it, but who knows. Here's the deal.

Every potential juror had to start by introducing themselves and answering a certain set of questions that were posted at the front of the room. You had to state details like your name and your occupation, your marital status and number of children, the occupation of any other adults living in your household, whether you'd been on a jury before, and whether you'd be a victim of or a witness to any crimes. Then the judge would ask you some further questions, sometimes details about something you'd said in the first bit and then some additional questions that related to the trial at hand, like whether you rented or owned your home.

Here are some sample conversations. Can you spot my complaint?

0.
Potential Juror: I am a librarian for an elementary school and I have two kids. I am divorced.
Judge KF: How old are your children?
Juror: 9 and 12
Judge: What does your ex-husband do?
Juror: He is a history professor at UCLA.

1.
Potential Juror: I am a real estate agent and I live in Glendale with my wife and 5-year-old son.
Judge KF: Does your wife work outside the home?
Juror: Yes, she is a nurse.

2.
Potential Juror: My name is Potential Juror. I live in West LA. I work at Smart & Final. I am a widow.
Judge KF: I'm sorry to hear that. What did your husband do?
Juror: He worked in construction.

3.
Potential Juror: My name is Potential Juror. I live in West LA. I work at Ralph's. I am a widower.
Judge KF: I'm sorry to hear that. Did your wife work outside the home?
Juror: No, she was a stay-at-home mom.

Did I make it clear enough in those last two examples? To every man he'd use the very politically correct phrase, "Does your wife work outside the home?". To every woman he'd say, "What does your husband do?". I think he loses the political correctness that way - he wouldn't dream of saying, "Does your husband work outside the home?"

Perhaps I should note that I'm not normally on the lookout for slights, to my sex or my ethnicity or anything. I am not easily offended and this didn't offend me, but I certainly found it interesting and was very curious to hear how the judge would react if it were pointed out to him.

What do you think? Am I over-reacting by having noticed it at all? Is it perfectly reasonable, given that it's still much more common for married women to not have jobs than it is for married men? Is it one of those subtle things that undermines progress toward equality and needs to be rooted out? Is gender equality a big ball of crap? Was I really bored enough during jury questioning to have noticed this? Am I still typing questions?

Discuss.

P.S. This post was originally titled:
Q: How many feminists does it take to change a lightbulb?
and its first line was:
A: That's not funny.


PPS Just found this and was a little amazed, having just said, "I mean, I'm not like a raving Femi-Nazi or anything," like, two paragraphs ago.

360; Or, the View from Stanley Mosk

So, here's the kind of girl I am: every day during the trial, we get a few breaks. As I've mentioned, I'm LOVING the part of this ordeal that I get to spend running around exploring downtown, and that is pretty much what happens every day at lunch time. I've gone to a new amazing place almost every single day at lunch so far and it is fabulous and more blog posts will come about those. But that's not the point of this post.


This post is about how we also get these small mid-afternoon recesses and other little breaks like that, and generally if we only have 15 minutes or so I don't leave the building but I also don't sit directly outside the courtroom door and wait like many of the jurors do. What do I do? I take the elevator to a random floor and walk around, of course! One of the first days I took the elevator (or escalator, to be precise) (or to be even more precise, escalators) to the top floor, the ninth. Turns out there is a cafeteria up there, and an outside patio from which you can look out all over downtown. From the Southwest side you can see the Walt Disney Concert Hall (above picture, right), where I park every day: From the Northwest, the Music Center (Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, Mark Taper Forum, etc) (picture to left). From the Northeast side... OHMIGOD I JUST REALIZED MY PHONE DOES VIDEOS!! LOOK:

What a day.

(Those little photos aren't great when you blow 'em up, but they're pretty good for phone pix, no? I love my Treo, Dad, thank you! And Adar :)

Part 3a-c of Many

So, remember “Read.Dance.Bliss: The Day” ? Here’s the story of items 3) a, b, and c from the handy outline, from my first full trial day, last Monday (and, I think, the first time ever that someone (me) posted "more on this later" or similar and then actually wrote more on this later.)

The background is this: at one of my many jobs, I teach dance in an elementary school. One of the administrators told me recently that she’d signed up our fifth graders to participate in this Children’s Music Festival that would be happening on April 1st, and that part of the festival included taking the children to see a dance performance and that after the performance, all the students who had come (many thousands of them) would all go out to a big plaza and do a little dance together. The Music Center people had sent along detailed instructions on how to do this dance, along with a CD of the music and a DVD demonstrating the dance. All the dance teachers at all the schools were asked to teach the kids the dance ahead of time, so that they’d be able to recognize some of the steps in the professional dance performance they were going to see and so they’d be ready to perform the dance after the show along with everyone else. A lovely idea, well-explained in the instructions and the DVD, etc. I happily learned the dance and taught it to my students. The only problem for me was that I really wanted to accompany the school to the event on April 1st, but it was a Tuesday, a day that I teach at a different school.

Well, as time got closer to the festival, I realized I’d really only have to get a sub for one of my classes and maybe I could go with the fifth-graders and then go straight to the high school to teach for the rest of the day… kind of a crazy plan, but maybe it would work. On the other hand, maybe it wasn’t really fair to miss a class just because I wanted to go to this thing… I wasn’t sure what to do.

Well, then it turns out I have jury duty. All my schedules are thrown into disarray and I’m getting substitutes and canceling classes left and right anyway; I certainly can’t lose any more teaching time than I absolutely have to.

Well, then it turns out that I have to be in court at 10:30am on April 1st, the day of the festival. So I’m missing all my classes that day anyway. And it seems that the show is supposed to begin at 9:45. Which is all interesting, but it obviously won’t help me be there unless the festival were, like, in the courthouse parking lot. I mean, I have to be ready to walk into my courtroom on the sixth floor at 10:30.

It’s super inconvenient anyway that I’ve been assigned to jury duty downtown. I mean, of course because I am who I am, I’m thrilled that I get to spend some time downtown that I wouldn’t have done on my own, but I talk to other people and they’re all like, “Oh, yeah, I had jury duty in Van Nuys,” (ten minutes from my house) or “I had to go to Encino,” (halfway between my work and my home) but for reasons unknown, I’d been summonsed to go all the way downtown, to the Stanley Mosk Courthouse.

Which is directly across the street from the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. Which is where the Children’s Music Festival is.

WOW.

So: that day, I drive myself downtown and meet the kids at the theater. The other teachers have saved me a seat on the aisle, so that I can leave whenever I need to in order to be in court on time. The show starts at around 10am and I get to see about two and a half numbers before I have to run across the street to arrive, perfectly on time, for court. Plus, my students all get to see me there and feel that I am a part of this experience I have been telling them about. I go to court, and we get some instructions from the judge, and then he tells us that opening statements are going to be postponed until after lunch because they have some more things to take care of first, so we are dismissed at about 11:00. 11! I rush out of the courtroom and dial my cell:
“I’m on a break already, are you guys still there?”
“We’re on the courtyard, about to do the dance. Come!”
I run across the street and see all 3,000 fifth graders and their teachers reviewing the dance. I hear my name called, but it is not my school; it’s a teacher from another school in the Valley who has brought her students to this huge event also. Wow! A couple hundred kids over I spot my own crowd and run over to them (heels in hand!). My students see me coming and cheer for me! We do the dance all together and I walk them to the buses and see them off. How utterly fantastic.

I wish I’d gotten to see the whole thing, but the Festival seems pretty awesome. You can see the official information about it here at the Music Center website. Yay!

Part One of Many; Or, Is it "empaneled", "empanelled", or "impaneled"?

This is going to be a post in installments, a multi-part message. I have so many things fighting for space in my brain and my fingertips right now! My post of last week was part zero. This is part one. First, Department 64-style, a brief outline of what is to follow:

0. Introduction; Background reading
1. RDB gets empanelled after a looooooooooong jury-selection process which she finds fascinating.
2. Trial starts; RDB is endlessly fascinated.
3. Read.Dance.Bliss: The Day.

a. Dance; Dorothy Chandler Pavilion
b. Trial begins, is prematurely recessed.
c. Dance; Music Center Plaza
d. Read; RDB explores downtown and falls in Love.
e. Trial continues, is endlessly fascinating and again, is shortly thereafter recessed.
f. RDB explores the courthouse.
g. Trial continues; is endlessly fascinating and is, once again, prematurely recessed.
h. RDB explores USC.
i. RDB explores WeHo and finds The Perfect Café in which to sit and blog. Happiness persists.

Ok, now: Jury Selection. The whole voir dire process was really interesting for me, both externally in listening to what the judge and the lawyers asked and how people responded and acted but also internally in the sense that I was very much torn about whether I wanted to get chosen or excused. On the one hand, of course I knew I'd enjoy being on a jury and watching this whole process and ya-dah ya-dah and on the other hand, it is disruptive enough to one's life to have jury duty for a day, never mind getting empaneled on a trial that may last until April 22! So I fought with myself. On the one hand, I would lose money and have to cancel a lot of classes at two of my jobs and I'd have to impose on other teachers to get subs for many of my classes at another job.
On the other hand... I certainly don't qualify for a financial hardship like some others, like the women with small children at home or the cashier at Smart & Final or anyone else in a much worse situation than me. They deserve to get excused much more than I.
On the other hand... my missing the specific days of school that I'd miss would mean a need to re-think THE big show I put together every year for Yom Ha'atzmaut (Israeli Independence Day) at the elementary school. That kind of sucks.
On the other hand... I get to not work without it being my fault, really, and spend all these lovely spring days in beautiful downtown LA with an hour-and-a-half lunch break every day during which time I'd walk like mad and explore the world - yay!

I came in during jury questioning day two. I listened to 16 people answer the same questions and have the same conversations, and then I saw about half of them get excused by one or the other of the lawyers. I saw this process repeated with the new 8 or so potential jurors, slightly shorter this time. The next day I have to go back (but this time at 10:30 instead of 7:30am, so I'm already happier), and I watch as 4 or so are asked to leave and 4 new names are called. Still not mine. I'm just sitting in the audience, trying to stay awake. These iterations continue and the numbers get smaller (Zeno?) until finally only one seat is empty and they call one name: mine.

They ask me approximately one question; they are so tired of this long process. Everyone accepts me and we go home. That was day two, last Wednesday.

Magically, the court happened to be not in session on Thursday or Friday, the two days I had doctor's appointments I would have had to cancel had I needed to be in court. Thank you, cosmic-scheduler. Similarly, I was in court all day today and will be tomorrow, not the worst days for me, and then we're off again Thursday and Friday, days which I am supposed to be away on the ultra-important annual all-school retreat. Thank you again, omniscient scheduler-in-the-sky. Next week, in court Monday through Thursday, days on which I have no special extra appointments that would conflict. As inconvenient as this can be, it's being pretty convenient.

And just wait until you hear about the magical scheduling issue that happened today, the cause of the all the "Dance" (items 3a and 3c, above)!! But this post is long enough. More to come and please stay tuned!

I've been empaneled! Details to come.

If you love me, if you truly love me, you'll make me this.

(No, I know you love me, don't spend 14 months of your life. Seriously.)

(Unless you really really want to.)

(Of course, my birthday is 14 months from now, incidentally.)

(No, don't. Really.)

(I wear a size large.)

"The jury has the right to determine both the law and the facts."

--Samuel Chase, U.S. Supreme Court Justice, 1796, Signer of the Declaration of Independence.

"An unwritten rule about blogging is that if you're called to jury service, you're required to write about it." -Metroblogging Los Angeles. (Ha ha. Apparently it is written.)

Therefore, as I am serving my jury duty today and tomorrow, I will serve my blogging duty shortly thereafter. You may want to read up on jury nullification in anticipation.

"The law itself is on trial quite as much as the cause which is to be decided."
Harlan F. Stone, 12th Chief Justice U.S. Supreme Court, 1941

"The pages of history shine on instance of the jury's exercise of its prerogative to disregard instructions of the judge..."
U.S.vs Dougherty, 473 F 2nd 113, 1139, (1972)


Mmmmmmm, sunny days downtown.