Tuesday, April 25, 2006
What Is Recoil Discoveries: The System Works!
posted by RICK : 10:18 AM
This morning I woke up at the crack of 7:15, got dressed and headed out to downtown Brooklyn in order to fulfill my civic responsibility, sitting in silent judgment of another. Here is the problem. I don't live in Brooklyn anymore. By the rules, this meant that I shouldn't be serving on a Kings County jury, but I wasn't about to try and get out of it, as I can only imagine everyone of the nearly half-million annual jurors in New York State tries to get out. But I came prepared. I brought along a couple pay-stubs and credit card bills showing my Manhattan address, just in case.
It went down thusly. I show up at the courthouse at 8:30am. I sit in a room with about a dozen or so people reading back issues of Esquire (March 2006, baby!). Halfway through the movie column about Joseph-Gordon Levitt [swoon] a friendly looking gentleman tells us to go into the jury room and take a seat. He'll be with us momentarily. I go in. I take a seat. I finish my JGL article and move on to Bill James. I look up and notice that the room full of a dozen or so potential new friends has suddenly turned into a room full of hundreds of definite strangers.
There was a guy up at the front who was telling everyone to take a seat and that he WOULDN'T be hearing our excuses as to why we shouldn't be here until after the movie.
Ooooh! A movie!
It featured such prominent personalities as Ed Bradley and Diane Sawyer and also had an moderately produced reenactment of the Salem witch trials (SPOILER! he didn't float).
Then the nice man came back and began the filtering process. "If you meet this piece of criteria, go through these doors and to the second room on the right," he'd say. The best part being the people who claimed the didn't speak English, to which the question was asked, "Are you a citizen?" They would answer yes, only for him to say, "How did you pass the test? It's written in English." BAM! Check and mate. Take that foreigners!
I sat tight. I wasn't going to raise my hand or try to weasel my way out. I was just going to sit there and if it took all day, so be it. And if all was said and done, and they didn't care that I'm technically no longer a "peer" of someone living in Brooklyn, then that would be fine by me. After all I did (intentionally) skip jury duty a month or so ago for that very reason (haha, breaking the law!).
But that isn't what happened. Instead, about 10 minutes after the video wrapped, the man said, "If you no longer live in Brooklyn, you can not serve on a jury so go through these doors and sit in the room at the right." I got up and did just that. It was me and this other guy. In came a woman. She was all business. She asked the other guy why he was there first. He said he didn't live in Brooklyn. She said she needed proof. He had none. She said he going to be asked back in six months and needed to bring proof then. He left. She came to me. I showed her my Juror form that came in the mail, and then I showed her my pay-stubs and credit card bills.
"Thanks Rick, you can go."
I was out by 9:35am.
The best thing about New York City government is that these people have heard it all before. There aren't any special cases, because there are so many people in this city everything has been done. This is why I found it amusing when people would walk into a room full of hundreds of strangers and instead of taking a seat going right up the guy in the front and trying to convince him they shouldn't be here. It only slowed things down. Eventually, they would be told to take their seat and their problem would be addressed to the group as a whole.
We're in this together people. No sense trying to rewrite the books.
This morning I woke up at the crack of 7:15, got dressed and headed out to downtown Brooklyn in order to fulfill my civic responsibility, sitting in silent judgment of another. Here is the problem. I don't live in Brooklyn anymore. By the rules, this meant that I shouldn't be serving on a Kings County jury, but I wasn't about to try and get out of it, as I can only imagine everyone of the nearly half-million annual jurors in New York State tries to get out. But I came prepared. I brought along a couple pay-stubs and credit card bills showing my Manhattan address, just in case.It went down thusly. I show up at the courthouse at 8:30am. I sit in a room with about a dozen or so people reading back issues of Esquire (March 2006, baby!). Halfway through the movie column about Joseph-Gordon Levitt [swoon] a friendly looking gentleman tells us to go into the jury room and take a seat. He'll be with us momentarily. I go in. I take a seat. I finish my JGL article and move on to Bill James. I look up and notice that the room full of a dozen or so potential new friends has suddenly turned into a room full of hundreds of definite strangers.
There was a guy up at the front who was telling everyone to take a seat and that he WOULDN'T be hearing our excuses as to why we shouldn't be here until after the movie.
Ooooh! A movie!
It featured such prominent personalities as Ed Bradley and Diane Sawyer and also had an moderately produced reenactment of the Salem witch trials (SPOILER! he didn't float).
Then the nice man came back and began the filtering process. "If you meet this piece of criteria, go through these doors and to the second room on the right," he'd say. The best part being the people who claimed the didn't speak English, to which the question was asked, "Are you a citizen?" They would answer yes, only for him to say, "How did you pass the test? It's written in English." BAM! Check and mate. Take that foreigners!
I sat tight. I wasn't going to raise my hand or try to weasel my way out. I was just going to sit there and if it took all day, so be it. And if all was said and done, and they didn't care that I'm technically no longer a "peer" of someone living in Brooklyn, then that would be fine by me. After all I did (intentionally) skip jury duty a month or so ago for that very reason (haha, breaking the law!).
But that isn't what happened. Instead, about 10 minutes after the video wrapped, the man said, "If you no longer live in Brooklyn, you can not serve on a jury so go through these doors and sit in the room at the right." I got up and did just that. It was me and this other guy. In came a woman. She was all business. She asked the other guy why he was there first. He said he didn't live in Brooklyn. She said she needed proof. He had none. She said he going to be asked back in six months and needed to bring proof then. He left. She came to me. I showed her my Juror form that came in the mail, and then I showed her my pay-stubs and credit card bills.
"Thanks Rick, you can go."
I was out by 9:35am.
The best thing about New York City government is that these people have heard it all before. There aren't any special cases, because there are so many people in this city everything has been done. This is why I found it amusing when people would walk into a room full of hundreds of strangers and instead of taking a seat going right up the guy in the front and trying to convince him they shouldn't be here. It only slowed things down. Eventually, they would be told to take their seat and their problem would be addressed to the group as a whole.
We're in this together people. No sense trying to rewrite the books.
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-Rick
(co-creator)
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