If like me you are a child of the suburbs, then probably the first thing you notice about big city government buildings is how old they are.   Also, everyone back in the old days seemed to think fake Roman columns add some sort of necessary gravitas.

The courthouse in Rockville I entered during my first two terms of jury duty was a very modern structure, all flat exterior walls, sharp corners, stainless steel and tempered glass.   The Baltimore City courthouse I walk into my first morning is marble and concrete and its steps are worn.   Its doors are huge dark wooden slabs.   Placed in front of them is a statue of a man I assume is some colonial Maryland personage.    I glance at the plaque and learn it’s the second Baron of Baltimore, Cecil Calvert, founder of the colony of Maryland…

George Calvert, 1st Baron Baltimore, applied to Charles I for a royal charter for what was to become the Province of Maryland. After Calvert died in April 1632, the charter for “Maryland Colony” (in Latin Terra Mariae) was granted to his son, Cecilius Calvert, 2nd Baron Baltimore, on June 20, 1632. Some historians viewed this as compensation for his father’s having been stripped of his title of Secretary of State in 1625 after announcing his Roman Catholicism.

The colony was named in honor of Queen Henrietta Maria, the wife of King Charles I.[5] The specific name given in the charter was phrased Terra Mariae, anglice, Maryland. The English name was preferred due to undesired associations of Mariae with the Spanish Jesuit Juan de Mariana, linked to the Inquisition.

As I go inside I glance back at Cecil.  From behind he looks vaguely like the character dressed up as Guy Fawkes in V For Vendetta.

There is a line going through the security checkpoint, and a sign pointing to a separate pathway to it for the jurors.   At eight o:clock in the morning that line is already long. I get behind an elderly woman and she and I begin to chat casually with each other and folks in the line nearby.  She tells us she’s just a few months away from her seventieth birthday and so this will be her last tour of jury duty.  It’ll be a relief she says, because she gets a summons about once every year. The others nod and tell similar stories. I tell them I’ve been living in the city for ten years and this is my first summons and they all look at me in bewilderment.

How’d you manage that…?

Forms are passed out for each of us to fill in.  It is the usual information…name, address, occupation, and a series of checkboxes: Have you ever been convicted of a crime where the penalty was more then six months in prison?  Are any of your close family members employed in law enforcement?  Are you currently a resident of the city of Baltimore?  And so on…

Eventually it’s my turn at the security checkpoint.  It’s a sad statement of the times we live in, but going to Disney World so often in the past several years has taught me the drill by heart.   I hand my backpack over, opening all its pockets.  Then I empty my own pockets of change and keys, place glasses, watch and cell phone in the tray.   Then I walk slowly through the metal detector.   Disney at least does not have metal detectors…for now.  Or if they do the imagineers have blended them  invisibly  into the  scenery.  I fetch back my things and follow the signs down a hall to the jury room.

I take a seat in the front, where I can stretch my legs out, and start getting comfortable.   I am expecting a long, long wait.   I see several big flat screen TVs on the wall in front of us and cringe inwardly.  If I have to just sit and  twiddle  my thumbs all day long I can do that, but I will go stark raving mad if I have to watch one or two hours of daytime television. Hopefully I can just plug my iPhone headset in, tune the TVs out with some music, and read.  I pull out my iPad and use it as a table top while filling out the form I was handed in line.  Then I check the weather.  I want to explore the city with my camera for a bit during the lunch break.

I am sitting next to the elderly lady I spoke with earlier in the security checkpoint line and we chat some more.   She is a single divorced mother of three children that she’s put through school entirely by herself.   I tell her about my own mother who did the same for me. We warm to each other.

The jury  commissioner  comes into the room and gives us a short talk about what to expect and what rules we need to know throughout our wait.  If you need to leave the room to go outside for a breath of air (or a smoke) tell the desk clerk your number and where you are going. If your number is called and you aren’t here we won’t go searching for you. If you don’t show up where you’re supposed to you will be marked as absent and a “show cause” order will be sent to you.  She asks for a show of hands of everyone who is here for the first time, and is please to see so many of us.  She says the commissioner’s office is working on getting juror lists updated so as to spread jury duty out among the population more equitably.  I’m guessing from the stories I’ve been hearing so far that the rolls might not have been updated for at least a decade for some reason.

She leaves the room and a voice on the loudspeakers gives us instructions to line up according to our juror numbers (which were printed on the summons we each got in the mail), to sign in, turn in our forms, and get our fifteen dollars juror pay.  We are called up in groups of one-hundred.  Jurors 1 through 99…then jurors 100 through 199…and so on.  The line snakes around the room and passes directly in front of me.  We area a highly diverse group of people.  Young, old, middle and working class, black, white.  A beautiful young man wearing nicely fitting low rise jeans, pink chucks, a light shirt and  denim  jacket passes in front of me, long blond hair wrapped into a bun held in place with a clip.  I try to catch his eye and smile, he walks on by without  acknowledgement, and the  loneliness  that never strays very far from my side lightly taps me on the shoulder.

The flatscreen TVs come to life and a video about what to expect if you are seated on a jury is played.  Even though I do not expect to actually sit in a jury box, I pay careful attention to it.  There is a difference between what you see on TV and in the movies, and what actually is.  Most of what this video tells me I pretty much already know, but I am impressed by the emphasis placed on individual conscience when evaluating testimony and evidence.  You should discuss your case with your fellow jurors the voiceover tells me, but never allow the judgment of others to  supersede  your own.  This is said several times in calm, measured assurance that it is not simply the right thing to do, but that it is your duty.  It actually lifts my spirits to hear this said in such a matter-of-fact, almost boilerplate kind of way.

Jurors 500 through 599 are called.  I am juror 508.  I  walk up to the register’s desk, check in and hand over my form.  Then I am directed to a pay clerk desk where I am again asked my juror number, told to sign by my name on a printout sheet, and then handed three five dollar bills and a stick on JUROR badge with my number written in the upper right hand corner.  So many people in line with me, and sitting in the chairs around me, wearing the same utterly bored expressions.  But this is the daily routine of the court clerks.  I wonder if they even see our faces.

I sit back down and almost at once a voice over the PA announces that a judge has called for a jury.  Jurors number 1 though 299 are asked to assemble in the lobby, there to be led as a group to a courtroom across the street.  About two minutes later another announcement calls for jurors 300 through 699.

Well…at least this time I’m actually going to get into a courtroom…

I gather my things and say goodbye to the elderly lady next to me.  She gives me a warm “God bless”.  Then I walk back to the lobby and a large group of us are led out of the courthouse to another one just across the street.  We go past the security checkpoint and are led upstairs into a courtroom.

We pass from the outer halls with various knots of people talking among themselves and into a place of hushed stillness, and for  a moment it feels as if I have been led into a church. There are rows of dark wooden pews facing toward a judge’s bench and attorney’s tables.  All that’s needed I think to myself, are the slots for the hymnals, communion glasses and those little cards you can drop into the collection plate if you’re a visitor.  The room looks as though recently remodeled, with new wooden paneling on the walls and an updated bench and jury box.  Yet somehow the room itself feels very old.  I make a bee line for some empty seats in the front row and sit down where I can see everything going on around the bench.

A moment ago I was part of a gathering of about a thousand people, give or take some who didn’t show up that morning.  Now I am one of about four hundred, again give or take some.  I look around.  We fill this courtroom to the brim.  I know what’s coming next and I wonder if this is the usual starting out size, or if the judge expects a lot of us to be excused or challenged before seating the jury even begins.  My number places me about in the middle of this group and I figure they’ll get their twelve long before they ever get to me.

Since this is To Be Continued, you already have a good idea how that went…