I have been summoned to jury duty only four times in my life. Two of those times occurred in Cook County, Illinois, and one, just last week, was in Middlesex County, Massachusetts. (The other time was for standby jury service in the Federal Court for the Eastern District of Massachusetts for a six-week period.) Never once have I actually been seated on a jury, however.

Cook County, with a population of over five million, is more populous than most states. With a population that size, you can imagine that there are many courthouses, and Illinois, like most states, likes to send its jurors to courthouses that are in other parts of the country from where they live. Since I lived in Oak Park, the logical place to send me was Skokie. To get to Skokie from Oak Park by public transportation, you have to take the El into the Chicago Loop to transfer to the Red Line to Howard Street, to transfer again to the Yellow Line, and then to transfer to a bus. By my calculations, the trip would take a good two hours. A friend who lived in Rogers Park at the time kindly let me crash at his place, shortening my trip considerably.

Skokie District Court was a fairly new facility, and it was large enough to have a cafeteria in the building. I remember the juror room as being comfortable, with upholstered seating. It’s a comfortable place to read, because that is what we did. We were given a break mid-morning, and by noon, they decided to go ahead and let us have lunch, with the idea that maybe they would know something by the time we got back. Finally, around 2:00pm, someone comes in and announces that there were three cases scheduled to start that day, but that two of them resulted in last-minute plea bargains, and in the remaining case, the defendant opted for a bench trial; hence, no jurors were needed. After we collected our checks for $17.20, we were free to go. Unfortunately, my bus options weren’t as good, since it wasn’t rush hour yet, and I had to take a bus to Evanston to connect with the El.

The second time Cook County summoned me, I lived in Chicago itself, and was assigned to the criminal court at 26th and California Streets. It is an old, rather dingy-looking high-rise in a neighborhood that tourists would generally not visit unless they were really lost. The juror room was large, with vending machines, a smoking area, a “quiet” room, and a large room filled with overstuffed chairs and three televisions. The TVs were useful for showing the orientation video, of course, but when they weren’t playing tha, they were playing regular TV programming. The OJ Simpson trial was in progress, and televised live, so one of the three TVs was playing I Love Lucy and the other two were playing Barney. I think you’d have an easier time finding a roomful of people who were enjoying themselves waiting for a colonoscopy than you’d have found here. But there was action. Panels were getting called out to go to courtrooms, with some coming back when they weren’t seated on the jury to try again. I got sent to a courtroom once, too, but they didn’t want me on their jury. Whatever. So I go back to watching Barney and waiting to see if I’m called again. Around 4:30pm, those of us who will still waiting were told we could leave, as soon as we stopped by the desk to collect our $17.20. In Illinois, employers are required to pay your salary while you were on jury duty, so the $17.20 was really important that day.

A few years ago, I was summoned to be a standby Federal juror. Since the courthouse for the Eastern District of Massachusetts is in Boston, this was easy for me. I pitied the people who lived on the Lower Cape or the islands who were still expected to schlep into Boston by 8:00am. This notice was peculiar, though, It was for six weeks. Once you were seated on a jury, you only had to serve for the duration of that trial. So while the Federal government got the “one trial” part of the “one day, one trial” system, they hadn’t caught on to the “one-day” part. You had to call every Friday to see if you were needed the following Monday. The last week, you had to call every night. After all that, I never even had to show up. I just racked up my employer’s message units calling downtown.

Last week, I was summoned for jury service in Middlesex County. Middlesex County only has one and a half million people, so it’s nowhere as big as Cook County, but geographically, it”s long and narrow. I live at one end of it, and the courthouse I was sent to was at the other end. (Middlesex even has two county seats because of this.) Because I was sent to one of the county seats (Lowell), there are multiple courthouses (Probate, Juvenile, Superior, and Trial court.) I was summoned to Trial Court, which wasn’t co-located with the others. When I got off the train, I hopped on a bus and asked the driver if he went there. He thought he did, but dropped my off at Superior Court. This turned out to be a reenactment of Skokie. None of the several cases that were scheduled to go to trial that day actually went to trial after all. So we were dismissed at 10:30am. Since Massachusetts requires employers to pay you while you’re on jury duty, they don’t, unless you’re on a trial for four days or more.

And here I was, looking forward to the $50.