What the hell is wrong with the government?

So, serving my civic responsibility, I responded to a summons for jury duty in the Court of Common Pleas of Philadelphia today. Here's how my day went:

• 8:15 AM - 10:00 AM: In an auditorium filled with about 500 people, I watch a video which tells me how to fill out a questionnaire. Apparently, blank spaces such as "Last Name" and questions like "Do you think you could be a fair juror?" are too difficult to answer unaided.
• 10:00 AM - 1:30 PM: I experience, first-hand, the sluggish jury selection process. 35 of us are herded into a courtroom, and are explained the circumstances of a trial which only requires an 8-person jury. After hours of pointless questions with irrelevant answers, as well as a great deal of simply sitting around, the eight jurors are picked. Three-fourths of us are told thanks, and that we can now leave. At least half of us were never even asked a question.
• 2:00 PM: Along with the gratitude of the City of Philadelphia, I pick up my $9 check, and leave, the better part of a day wasted.

Am I bitter? Just a little. To be fair, this is not my first experience with the jury selection process. I also participated in Alachua County, Florida. Very similar results: an entire day was wasted, and in the end, I was not chosen to serve.

My complaints with this process take two parts. First of all, the initial information-gathering stage is colossally inefficient. I realize that the informational video which we are shown has to cater to the "lowest common denominator," if you will. Still, is there any need for a 15-second pause after every question is explained? Does it take anyone 15 seconds to either check "Yes" or "No???" For that matter, is it necessary to explain the questions at all? Shouldn't there be an assumption that we are literate, since we managed to register to vote and/or pass a driver's test?

The horrible, horrible boredom of the second part of the process can be summed up in one simple word: Lawyers. They bloat every stage of the judicial process, jury selection included. For every juror who indicated that he or she had been party or witness to a lawsuit, the entire group of us had to hear the exact circumstances of the suit or suits. All of them except one were completely irrelevant to this case, an automobile accident lawsuit. Wouldn't it have been easier to simply ask if anyone had been involved in this particular type of case?

As if that weren't enough, once the insipid question portion was complete, then the two lawyers had to discuss all of us, and decide who was fit to serve on the jury and who would be excluded. For an hour, we sat there, in uncomfortable chairs, in a silent, stuffy courtroom, bored to tears.

Finally, they called out the chosen jurors by number. Each of us had been assigned a number in some random order, 1 to 35. The eight jurors were selected all came out of the first 15. With a number of 32, I never really had a chance.

The really annoying part is that I would have liked to serve. Half the people in there were talking about what excuses would get them "out of this." I would have made a damn intelligent, impartial, and fair juror. Still, by nothing more than luck of the draw, I was out of luck and out of six hours of my time.

Is it really necessary to have a 4:1 ratio between potential jurors and the number of jurors actually needed? How about this -- if a trial needs 12 jurors, we pick 12 names out of a hat, and there's your jury. The Constitution guarantees a right to a trial by a jury of one's peers. There are no guarantees that "one's peers" have to be intelligent, rational, or even fair. Some of my peers in this city are insane. If I happen to get one or two of them on my jury, there's still ten or eleven relatively sane people. That would be a true "trial of my peers," instead of an attorney-sanitized panel.

A little extreme? Maybe. But then, you weren't the one counting ceiling tiles in Courtroom 625 this morning, were you???