I missed my regular post last week. Not for lack of desire, but unfortunately I was otherwise occupied. That’s right, I was called in to fulfill my obligation to the people of the State of New York. They found me, they caught me, and there were no more opportunities to postpone. So I begrudgingly went to the courthouse for jury duty.

Although this post is certainly off-topic given the focus of this blog, I had some observations that I’ll share with you.

1. Inefficiency abounds (at least insofar as the jury selection process is concerned) – I sat idle for several hours, only to be called into service as a prospective juror in a jury pool around noon. Once inside the courtroom, they allowed each individual to raise his or her objections to serving on that particular case (in private, one-on-one with the judge). Meanwhile, we waited. Then it was time for lunch. After lunch, they proceeded to interview half of the jury pool, while the other half was made to sit in the courtroom and wait, and wait, and wait (no reading, writing, or arithmetic allowed). When they got around to interview the second half of the potential jurors, it was time to break for the day. We then came back the next morning to be questioned by the attorneys. Not only was the actual jury selection process inefficient, but many of the selection processes are still done by hand. For example, they still put names into a giant bingo machine, spin it around, and call out jurors one by one when they decide who gets selected for a particular jury pool. In addition, everything inside the court is done by hand. They even had a real life stenographer. Haven’t stenography machines been digitized yet? Now don’t get me wrong, I believe in a fair process. I believe that defendants deserve a fair trial. So in that sense I’m in favor of inefficiency, at least to the extent that it improves quality. However, I’m not sure that in this case there were any quality benefits to that inefficiency. Expediency might have even produced a better outcome. To me, inefficiency without quality is like consistency without accuracy. Sure, a consistent process will give you the same outcome every time, …too bad it will be the wrong outcome every time too.

2. The defendant’s chances of having a "fair" trial have less to do with jury selection and more to do with the competency of the defense attorney – I’m extrapolating here from a sample of 1, but it was obvious that on the case I was assigned, the defense attorney was court appointed. Moreover, the defense attorney was incompetent. I’m sure those two things (court-appointed and incompetent) are not mutually inclusive. However, if the average quality of a court-appointed attorney bears any resemblance to that of the defense attorney on my case, then those defendants who cannot afford their own attorneys are in a world of hurt. I know this is nothing new, as people have been arguing for years that "fair" trials are reserved for the wealthy. But wow, to see it this up close and personal was sobering!

I was only left to think: Although they say the law is color-blind, …I’m fairly certain the law sees green.

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