It begins with a little slip of paper, delivered to you by the neighborhood post person…

Greetings, from the President of the United States…

Er…  Okay, I never actually got that little slip of paper.  It was this one…

You are hereby summoned to appear in room 240 courthouse west. St. Paul and Lexington Sts. on Thurs, November 17, 2011 at 8:00 AM to serve as petit juror.

I’d only been summoned to jury duty twice before in my life, both times back when I lived in Rockville.  The first time I was part of a large jury pool that had simply been dismissed after lunch, when it was announced that all the jurors needed for that day has already been selected.  The second time I actually made it inside a court room for the selection process, but they got their twelve before my number was called, and the rest of us were excused.

If you’ve never been to jury duty, at least here in Maryland there is a method to the process.  It is one day or one trial and the night before, you either call a number printed on your summons or you go to a web site and you look to see if your juror number, also printed on the summons, was called.  My number was 508.  I figured I had a 50-50 chance of not even having to go downtown.  But the evening before my  scheduled  date when I checked,  I found that jurors number 1 through 999 had been called up.

They want a thousand of us tomorrow…

Ten years I have lived in Casa del Garrett, my little rowhouse here in the city of Baltimore, and I had not once been summoned to jury duty.  Now here it was.  I am not one of those who bellyache about jury duty.  Apart from voting, jury duty is one of the purest acts of democracy there is.  The state cannot deprive a citizen of their liberty without due process, and not until it can convince twelve common citizens that one of their own is guilty of a crime.  That is as revolutionary as it gets.  You can say it’s a democratic responsibility, you can say it’s a civic duty, I say it is something we should be grateful for.  If the blood of so terribly many Americans was shed defending anything, it is this.  And the ballot.  Jury duty is the cost of that liberty and justice for all thing.

So…my number is called.  Fine.  The next morning I get up super early (for me) and pack a couple sandwiches, a bottle of ice tea, some books and some magazines.  I check to see if computers all allowed and they are, so I also pack my iPad. The iPhone also comes along.  I figure actually using the cell phone functionality won’t be allowed, but listening to music and checking Facebook, Twitter and Google News would be okay.  Also I pack a 35mm camera, the Nikon F2 I bought recently, its 24mm lens and some extra rolls of Tri-X.  I knew cameras wouldn’t be allowed in the courthouse, but  I have lived in this city ten years now and still haven’t explored the downtown area very much, so I figure at the lunch break I would wander around for a bit with the Nikon.

I double-check the location of the city courthouse on Google Maps, and plot a course.  At 7AM I hit the road to get downtown before traffic on I-83 gets bad.  At that time of morning traffic flows easily into the city, and I find a good parking spot on the first floor of the Mercy Hospital public parking garage, just around the corner from the city courthouse.

I pull the camera and film out of my backpack and leave them in the trunk.  Then I swing the backpack on and walk outside.  It is chilly but sunny as I walk toward the courthouse.  The sidewalks are full of other pedestrians; it seems the city had already woken up some hours before.  I am in the middle of downtown Baltimore, the tall buildings driving home something I keep forgetting, living as I do in my quiet rowhouse neighborhood close to the university:  I live in the big city.  I gawk like a tourist at the skyscrapers surrounding me…old and ornate brick and concrete next to gleaming new steel and glass.  It is early morning and their top floors glare down at me in bright morning sunlight that hasn’t as yet found the streets.  Down here it is all shadow and early morning coldness and traffic noise that echoes off the concrete walls.  Everyone is busy going somewhere.  I walk along with them, watching as they  navigate  the crosswalks, figuring they’d know the traffic flow here better then I could guess it.  I make mental notes of the stores and eateries I see along the way.

I enter the courthouse.  I know the drill…walk in, show my summons, go through security, find the jury pool room, take a seat and wait for instructions.  Probably I’ll have some forms to fill out.  I am pretty sure it will end up being the same experience I’d had before back in Rockville: a lot of sitting down and waiting…maybe get led into a courtroom…and then ultimately being sent home.

It wasn’t.

[To be continued…]