Last year when I suddenly had to have my knee replaced, I also suddenly had to postpone jury duty. They don't let you serve while under an anesthetic.
Then when I had to go back into the hospital to have that surgery redone, I had to postpone jury duty again. That's twice. In L.A., they let you have three postponements and then that's it.
Today, I went down to the courthouse in downtown Los Angeles, joined the jury pool, heard that all the pending cases might last a minimum of seven days…and decided to use my third postponement. I just have too much to do next week. So I deferred my service to a week in August where I can plan for it and when I hopefully won't need any medical treatment.
Before I left, I sat through a welcoming speech and lecture by a Superior Court Judge who spoke a lot about Dr. Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks and Cesar Chavez and who tried to draw a connection between that those folks did to achieve justice and what we, as jurors, would be doing. The comparison seemed forced to me. Those three champions made justice happen by defying the law. Jurors are supposed to enforce the law. I whispered to the man next to me, "I think he's saying that as jurors, our job is to go out and organize bus and grape boycotts."
It all sounded very much like pandering to minorities — which was curious since there didn't seem to be many in a room of about 300 people. I saw no blacks at all, perhaps thirty Hispanics and the rest of it could have passed racially for a Donald Trump rally. This is a court that handles civil cases and I wonder if there was a different composition down the street in the courts where they handle criminal matters. Maybe it was just a fluke of the lottery system today.