I got called for jury duty right before my book deadline
It triggered a whole lot of over-thinking...
So, after last week’s big book title/cover reveal, it was full steam ahead with The Ghostwriter of Christmas Past, which I now just have to finish writing. And editing. And, well, all of the various other things that have to happen before a book can be published.
Now, the book comes out on November 22nd, which means there’s not a lot of time for me to do all of this. But it was fine. It was good. Because I’d carefully worked out exactly how many days I had left to do it all in — factoring in next week’s school holidays, which I’d taken into account — and as long as nothing happened to prevent me working my little ass off on every single one of those days, it was just about manageable.
Naturally, then, the day after I put out a newsletter announcing the new book, I woke up to a letter summoning me for jury service right slap in the middle of my remaining work time.
So, this is the bit of the newsletter where I say something very earnest about how, under any other circumstances, I would have been delighted to perform my civic duty as a juror, because it is just SO important for the survival of our democracy that people be tried by a jury of their peers1. I would also say how fascinating it would be to get this unique insight into the justice system, and, I dunno, maybe some other stuff designed to reassure you all that I’m a fine, upstanding member of the community?
Actually, though, I’m not going to say any of that, because, as it happens, I’ve been worrying about being called for jury service for approximately my entire adult life; a fear that roughly dates back to the many long months I spent watching the O.J. trial with my mum (Who was obsessed with it to the point that I vaguely expected her to be invited onto talkshows as an expert commentator…) and discovered that jurors could be sequestered: sometimes for months on end. Imagine!
(Oh, and also because I actually DON’T think being tried by a jury of my peers sounds all that great, really. Because a quick look at social media confirms that my peers include people who think the earth is flat, ones who think your star sign says quite a lot about you — “Pisces? Guilty, m’lud!” — and that one guy who thinks Donald Trump is the only one who’s telling us the truth. Seriously, would YOU want your fate to be in the hands of someone who thinks satellites are just made up? Me neither.)
Other things I learned from the O.J. trial, and the subsequent internet rabbit hole I fell into after it as part of my ‘research’ into jury trials:
How slowly you can drive a Bronco.
What an Akita looks like.
That if the glove don’t fit, you must acquit.
That Marsha Clarke is kind of a badass, really.
Everyone was secretly hoping she’d hook up with Chris Darden, right? Or was that just me?
I wonder if anyone’s written a romance novel based on that possibility?
Should I do that?
That jurors in the O.J. trial were sequestered for a total of 8 months, during which they were only able to contact their families via phone or letter.
Yes, letter. Because it was the olden days.
Imagine not seeing your family or friends for EIGHT MONTHS.
Jurors can also be placed under jury protection, which can mean even more limited contact with their families.
I would literally die.
Especially if the case was an even mildly upsetting one, which it definitely would be, knowing my luck.
Even if you’re not sequestered, jury trials can still effectively take over your life for very long periods of time: the longest one in UK history, for instance, lasted two and half years, and STILL didn’t reach a verdict.
Seriously, though.
Imagine if that happened to you?
Oh my God, that WILL happen to me, won’t it?
Because of all of this, I ended up developing an ongoing, completely irrational fear that I would be called for jury duty, and it would basically ruin my life. I realize this makes me sound certifiable, but I was completely freaked out by the idea that, at any given time, I could be taken away from my home and family and forced to do something I was completely unqualified for, and that might end up being the kind of traumatic that requires counseling afterwards. And it still does, tbh.
A comprehensive list of the very specific fears I have about being made to do jury duty:
The trial goes on for weeks, and because I’m self-employed and there’s no one who can do my job other than me, all of my clients (This fear dates back to when I had clients, obviously…) have to find someone else to work with instead, so rather than just losing a few days work, I end up losing my entire livelihood, and being sent to the Victorian workhouse.
Being sequestered.
What if I have a book deadline coming up, and I can’t move the pre-order back because I’ve done it too many times already and Amazon will penalize me if I try to do it again, and also it’s a Christmas book, so if I don’t release it before Christmas, ain’t no point, really?
Being put under jury protection.
Being forced to look at/listen to graphic evidence of some horrific crime, which will literally destroy me mentally for the rest of my life.
It’s something gang related, and members of the gang see me in the jury box, then somehow manage to track me down (probably via Instagram), and start threatening me/my family unless I can persuade the other jurors to acquit.
Which I can’t, because, honestly, no one ever listens to me. Admit it, you’re barely even listening now, are you?
A lot of very weird issues centering around the concept of effectively being ‘trapped’ in a place I’m not allowed to leave. This is also why I have a lifelong fear of hospitals. It would be fair to say I have control issues. And, well, just issues, basically.
They take my phone away from me, but there’s some kind of emergency with Max/another loved one, and I’m uncontactable because I’m trapped. [See above]
The gang thing again, only it’s just a random member of the accused’s family who tracks me down this time. They claim to be an old friend, who just happens to be in the area, so Terry lets them in, but then it turns out they have a knife/gun, and now we’re embroiled in a tense hostage situation. Think this actually happened in Neighbours one time.
I make the wrong decision and end up either sending an innocent person to jail, or acquitting a guilty one, who then goes on to commit further crimes. I spend the rest of my life haunted by this.
I make the right decision, but because I am terminally indecisive, I still spend the rest of my life haunted by the suspicion that it might have been the wrong one, and that I am now personally responsible for ruining innocent lives, including, but not limited to, my own.
It’s some kind of financial/fraud case, and, honestly, I can’t understand any of it, no matter how many times it’s explained to me. So I do that thing I always do when I’ve asked someone to repeat themselves three times, and by the third time I still don’t know what they said, so I just nod and pretend I totally get it. This naturally takes us back to point 11, in which I make the wrong decision, and am haunted.
Apparently if you Google the name of the accused while you’re on a jury, it’s considered contempt of court, and you can go to jail for it. But what if the accused has the same name as someone else I’ve Googled at some point (I mean, I’m an author, I spend a lot of time trying to come up with character names…) and this somehow comes to the attention of the court2, who think I was Googling the accused, and send me to jail?
Would be really hard not to want to write about everything that was happening in my newsletter, tbh.
And, of course, I’m not totally insane, here. I am mostly insane, obviously, but, at the same time, I want to be really clear that I’m very aware that these are all (mostly) irrational fears3, and that the vast, vast majority of people who do jury service don’t encounter any of them (With the possible exception of number 12, which, I honestly don’t know how you could serve on a jury and NOT spend the rest of your life haunted by the fear that you’d made the wrong decision? How do people do that? While we’re on the subject, what’s it like to not be riddled with anxiety all the time?).
I know all of this because, as a young newspaper reporter, the courts were actually part of my ‘beat’ for a while. Every week, I would drive to the one closest to our office, and I would sit there in the public gallery (Normally on my own, because most trials aren’t of much public interest) and try to find something worth writing about in the various cases that came up.
When I first found out this would be part of my job, I couldn’t believe my luck, because, like most people, I thought it would be like getting to watch a series of riveting courtroom dramas, and that I would be completely enthralled by it all. Lucky me! As it turned out, though, it was more like getting to watch lawyers endlessly debate really dull points of law for ages, only to then decide the thing they were arguing about was irrelevant anyway, but it was too late to continue now, so we’d have to adjourn until tomorrow, at which point the defendant would often fail to appear; sometimes because they just couldn’t be bothered, but occasionally because they’d been re-arrested for something else overnight4, and now it was a whole mess, basically.
Honestly, after that, I felt like any curiosity I had about the court system had been well and truly satisfied, which is why any time the whole ‘jury duty’ conversation comes up and someone says, “But it would be soooo interesting!”, I just think, “Probably not, tbh.”
With all of that said, though, in this current instance, it was point number 3 I was most worried about: because, if I’d had to do this particular round of jury service, it would have completely scuppered my chances of finishing this book on time, and given that, as I said above, there’s not much point releasing a Christmas book after Christmas, I was really worried that I’d basically just done all of this work for absolutely nothing, and that I would have to cancel the release, and let down everyone who’d been kind enough to pre-order the book. That I’d have written that paragraph in my last newsletter about how lucky I am to get to do this for a living, and the universe would’ve looked at it and gone, “We’ll see about that, young lady…”
(And also, most of what I’ve written above is exaggerated for dramatic effect (YOU DON’T SAY!), obviously, but when you’re self-employed, or own a small business, the prospect of having to suddenly take an unplanned break from it for God only knows how long is genuinely quite fear-inducing; especially when your financial position is as precarious as ours currently is…)
But my fears were all for nothing, people; as my very specific fears so often are. Because, having spent pretty much the entire weekend working on a long email describing exactly why I can’t do jury service right now (You’ll be pleased to know I didn’t mention O.J. in it at all. And I only brought up gangs twice…5), I got a two-line response first thing on Monday morning confirming I’d been excused. My guess is that whoever got my email read it and just went, “lol, nope.” I also suspect they’ll probably be reading that email aloud at their office Christmas parties for a long time to come, purely for the laughs. Don’t worry, I hate me, too.
So, all’s well that ends well. Ghostwriter is still on track to be released next month. And, in even better book-related news, I’m excited to tell you that Cool Girl Summer is now available as an audiobook, narrated by the amazing Charlie Albers; an incredible, award-winning voice actor who I feel very, very lucky to have as the voice of Summer because, honestly, she nailed it.
You can find it on Audible here, or just search the title on your local Amazon site. Oh, and it’s also available on Apple Books, which I can’t figure out how to link to, but, again, if you search the title, it should come up.
I kind of wish I’d led with this news, tbh, rather than that whole thing about me being threatened by gangs in a completely fictional scenario which isn’t going to happen. I mean, you can totally see that, whatever you think about the concept of jury service, there are some people who really just aren’t cut out for it, can’t you?
Still: on the plus side, I’ve now worked up a whole plot in my head about warring ex-lovers who are sequestered together for weeks while forced to serve on the same jury. Maybe one of them gets kidnapped. Maybe by a gang? Maybe I should stop now?
Until next week,
Despite the fact that there are actually many democracies that survive just fine without forcing random members of the public to serve on juries against their will.
How, though? Do they routinely hack your computer to spy on you when you’re a juror, just in case you’re Googling stuff you shouldn’t be? Is this something else I should add to my list?
That’s kind of how anxiety works, though, funnily enough.
Drugs. It was always, always drugs.
This is a joke.
So glad you got excused from it. I also live in fear of it!
Point 5 woud definitely be my "I don't mind the penalty, I'm NOT coming" trigger.
In France too you can ask to be exempted for various motives, one of them being the attendance negatively affecting your business, which would have been the case for you.
As a (major) side note, this whole post was not only hilarious as usual, but also hilariously enthralling, or enthrallingly hilarious, whichever you prefer.