LAWYERS MAKE REPORTING FOR JURY DUTY DREADFUL.

Byline: Pat Parker

I hereby declare, on information and belief, that I will never serve on a jury. Oh, I'll show up for the cattle call known as jury duty because the law says I must.

The problem is, though, that the way our system is structured, no experienced and competent counsel would ever let me anywhere near his case. Calling me to jury duty is a waste of time. I know that, and if the court-services people were honest and sensible, they would admit that they know it too and send me home.

So what is wrong with me? I am not a criminal, an illegal alien, a mental incompetent, nor deficient in English. Why am I, a law-abiding, home-owning citizen of reasonable intelligence, not eligible to serve on a jury? It's the lawyers.

Let me explain:

First: I have been an employee of the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office and a volunteer for the Los Angeles Police Department. I am a conservative, Republican, Christian, gun-owning NRA member who favors the death penalty (and throwing away the key) on multiple strikes. Scratch me from any criminal panel.

Second: I have worked as a legal secretary in the private sector for almost 15 years on a variety of issues. Scratch any product liability, property dispute, real estate, personal injury or pretty much any other type of case you can come up with.

That doesn't leave much.

Last spring I reported for two weeks to the downtown complex (criminal courts and county courthouse), where I spent mornings listening to my Walkman, while crocheting (when I was not being tortured by the drivel offered up on the jury room television). Most afternoons I was instructed to report on various panels and dutifully submitted to intrusive and thoroughly irrelevant questions designed by attorneys to psychoanalyze a perfect stranger in 10 minutes or less. Even if the attorneys had such brilliant analytical competence (which they don't), such an experience puts the juror on trial.

Are you, the juror, the right color/sex/gender preference/religion/political mind-set? Are you really the closet bigot we assume you to be, or can you be trusted to do the decent thing and render a considered judgment? If you have been mugged, can you really and truly look at an accused mugger and have the sense to remind yourself that you were not the victim in this instance?

The attitude of lawyerly superiority and condescension is something no intelligent person should have to endure and the assumption that one's heart and character can be discerned in this fashion is nothing short of insulting.

I can truly say that I have been ``thanked and excused'' out of some of the finest courtrooms America has to offer. I, like so many others, found the entire experience irritating, insulting and a complete waste of time. Adding insult to injury, if there is worse luncheon fare than at the county courthouse cafeteria, I have yet to find it.

The best way to solve the jury dilemma would be this: Summon the jurors to the court closest to home. At assembly, call the first 25 names and dispatch them to a courtroom.

In the courtroom, allow the judge to query whether any of the 25 have any personal stake in the case to be tried or personally know any of the parties. That done, call by random lot the first 12 names plus three alternates, sit them in the jury box, return the rest to the assembly room, and let the trial begin. No cherry-picking, no lawyerly hocus-pocus guesswork about a person's character, and relatively little waste of the available juror pool.

Not only would jurors be able to do their civic duty and go home, courtroom backlogs would be dramatically reduced. How? If lawyers knew they had to try their cases solely on the merits rather than on how many jurors they thought they could con, there would be a lot more reasonable pretrial settlements. Only those convinced they had the facts and the law on their side would hazard a true ``jury of one's peers.''

Jurors would be spared two weeks of mind-crushing boredom (primarily alleviated by the punishment of afternoon soaps/talk shows in the assembly room), employers would be spared an enormous waste of money in paying jurors to catch up on their reading, and justice might actually be served.

What a concept.