This will be something of an unusual blog post for me, if someone who posts as infrequently as I do can be said to have a usual blog post post. Last week I served jury duty for Richland County (South Carolina). Before serving, I tried to find information online about what to expect. Richland County provides a good outline of steps that occur when and if you are selected as a juror, but it doesn’t provide a lot of information about the human logistics that I had questions about. So this post is my attempt to briefly document a few of the things I wish I had known going into the jury duty process.
Cell Phones
The jury summons says the cell phones are not allowed in courtrooms, so on the first day I left mine in the car. That turned out to be unnecessary. They allow you to keep your cell phone in the first court room you visit, where role call is taken, though they insist that you turn it off. And those of us who were selected as jurors were made to stow our phones in a lock box outside of the jury room during the trial and deliberations. Otherwise, having your phone on you and on is perfectly fine.
Laptops and Snacks
After role call, the entire jury pool for the week reports to a large room called the jury assembly room for further instructions and to wait to be called for a panel. It’s not five star accommodations by any means, but they have made an effort to make it reasonably comfortable. There are restrooms, coffee, and a decent selection of books and magazines available. Apparently there is theoretically also a canteen, but that was being renovated when I was there, so the only place to purchase food on site is from a few vending machines. But you can bring your own snacks, as well as whatever electronic devices or reading material you need to keep yourself occupied while you wait to be called. Again, you’ll be asked to stow these things if you end up on a jury, but they are very reasonable about it.
The Call System
What you are waiting for in the jury assembly room is a call from the judges requesting a batch of potential jurors for a panel. At some point during the day they may decide they aren’t going to need anyone else that day and send you home. In that case you may be given a number to call at a certain time for further instructions. In my case I was dismissed around one o’clock the first day and when I called in at six that evening the instructions were to report again at 9:30 the next morning. As I understand it, though, that is just one of several possible instructions:
- You may be asked to report in at a certain time, as I was.
- You may be told that your service is finished, and excused for the week.
- You may be given a new time to call, possibly in the middle of the day, for updated instructions. If instructed to report in the middle of the day, you would have two hours to get to the courthouse.
Two things are worth noting with the call system. One, it’s just a static message, not keyed by juror number, so it is fairly blunt instrument for delivering information. Two, the court system will only vouch for you with your employer on days you actually report, so if you are “on standby” during the day you should still expect to go to work.
Staff
This is the one place in this article where I’m going to offer a few subjective opinions. In general, the staff at the courthouse was easy to deal with. Everyone was polite, patient, and as accommodating as they could be within the bounds of the law. I do have two mild criticisms though. The first is that the procedures and dissemination of information in the jury assembly room were somewhat disorganized. It was not so much that it really interfered with the smooth functioning of the room, but I did find it off putting that this machine that presumably runs essentially the same way every week didn’t feel more well oiled. The second is that most of the bailiffs tended to be genteelly patronizing. They certainly weren’t rude, but they tended to talk to us like affectionate grandparents who had forgotten that we weren’t still five years old. Both of these issues are minor, however, and shouldn’t take away from the larger message that the staff at the Richland County courthouse does an overall very good job of shepherding a diverse jury pool through the process.
