Reflections on jury duty

he Bronx County jury duty system is inefficient

On the first day of my recent jury duty service, I sat with 70 other citizens fulfilling their civic obligation inside a room in the Bronx County Courthouse building.

It wasn’t until 1 p.m. during my second day that I actually entered the courtroom. Here a judge instructed me to return the next day for our interviews.

Why couldn’t our interviews have taken place that afternoon?

There were people who were just being interviewed after waiting for five days.

It was not until my third day waiting at the courthouse that I actually was interviewed as a potential juror.

What a waste of time was it for me and all the other jurors.

Why should it take two days of idleness before I am interviewed?

What a tremendous waste of manpower.

It seems that if the people are of a lower socioeconomic class, as it is prominent in the Bronx, you can waste their time and not suffer any repercussions — no one will complain.

Or, if you deal with criminals, you can mistreat other persons you are involved with.

The Bronx has also been sited for tremendous delays in trying cases, having to bring judges from the outside to hear backlogged cases.

It seems that this backlog is also present in the jury selection process.

My friends who live in other boroughs were shocked at the inefficiency I experienced.

In the room where one waits to be called, we were smugly told to go across the street to 851 Grand Concourse, if we wanted to appeal serving. However, that address is not actually just across the street — it’s at least a block walk across the busy Grand Concourse.

With all the technology available and the vast new criminal court building at 265 E 161 Grand Concourse, why are jurors told to walk across the street? Is there no room to do this at 265 E. 161st St.?

It has a taste of being punitive.

We have heard about how the prison system in this country is corrupt or at best, a form of big business that owes its existence to the need to incarcerate criminals.

My observation is that the court system is also a thriving business that depends upon defendants and lawyers and all that go with them.

For example there were numerous court police throughout the building in their blue uniforms, strutting down the halls, with their weapon at their sides. They looked, for the most part, very happy, well paid and with easy jobs. I sensed excessiveness and waste.

I wonder if there has been any assessment of the whole jury selection process as it now stands?

Hiring an efficiency expert comes to mind. It is done for other businesses. It really needs to be done for this process, or else the system will continue to oppress the people of the Bronx and New York State.

We were asked to fill out a questionnaire on our first day.

We will be asked the same when we are finished here?

I would like to see the responses because I can’t imagine that people are satisfied.

If the court system were a private business then I am certain that they would lose patron very quickly. Hospitals, restaurants, and other businesses could not get away with this utter abuse of peoples’ time and ability to earn a living.

I call upon The Press to investigate the waste of time and the mistreatment that prospective jurors are subjected to.

Or can these matters just be ignored?

Elliot Arons resides in the Bronx.