To (not) judge a judge

I really don't have any qualifications to judge a judge (plus we promised not to), but I am qualified to judge a teacher so I will say this:

If a teacher ever ran his classroom the way our local judges run jury duty, he would not make it to Thanksgiving.

My experience at jury duty recently was appalling to say the very least. There I sat with 150 others to suffer through what would end up being 4 hours!!!! of voir dire.

In typical jury duty fashion, we were all herded through a metal detector (don't panic, they did confiscate my cuticle scissors so everyone was safe from me losing my mind and going berserk with a 1/2" blade). Our original numbers did not suffice so we were given new numbers as we sat and waited for questioning of the jury pool to begin.

The judge had 20 questions for us. I will just sample one exchange for you:

The question is: "Is anyone familiar with the defendant, his practice, his partners or his family? If so, please stand and state your number."

"135"

"139?"

"135"

"105?"

"135!"

"135?"

"Yes"

"You may be seated." Did I mention that we live in a small town and 1/3 of the pool stood for this question?

Twenty questions and thousands of responses later, I had memorized the numbers of about 1/2 of the folks in the room (clearly the ones who were not going to be permitted on the jury).

Every time a juror stood, the judge flipped through a legal pad that he laboriously numbered (by hand while we sat there) from 1-150 and put a tally mark along with the question which caused us to stand. We were not seated in numerical order but we shouted out our numbers that way so he had to have received 150 paper cuts in all the flipping that went on.

I could not believe that in 2013, the legal system was so attached so their "legal pads" that the thoughts of an excel spreadsheet, audience polling techniques, or heck, even an operational hearing aid were not considered.

As I was busy missing a day of work as a math educator, I spent my time calculating the expenses the judge was costing us. Each juror earned a whopping $15 paycheck. There were 4 lawyers in the room (at a conservative $300/hour). There were two security guards posted keeping tight reigns on my cuticle scissors and the one cell phone that rang that had to be confiscated. There was a stenographer (who thankfully did not have to type each of the number exchanges). There was also a bailiff costing the tax payers some funds. All said, this exchange that took 4 hours of our lives that we will never get back cost folks 150*15+4*4*300+4*2*10+4*15+4*12 if I underestimate the value of everyone's time in the room. That is $7238. Unbelievable!!!!!

I will not even go into the conversation I had to have with the judge to discuss the 7 questions that had me stand and repeat my number 21 times. I promised to do my civic duty and not judge the defendant prior to the trial, but I made no such guarantee about the judge. I think the lawyers felt my ire and decided I would not be needed for their trial. It's a good thing because I don't know a thing about the defendant, but the judge committed the crime of WASTING TIME!