Monday: Jury duty sucks.

First issue: they say on the webpage you need to be there at 7:45AM.  No one is awake at that time, what fuckery is this?  Then, you get there at 7:35, but the stupid building doesn't open until 7:45.  Right there, you get a taste of what's going to happen: you're going to waste a lot of time, and the judge is going to try to convince you this is a great thing you're doing.

Once you get inside, you get to wait to watch the introduction video, made with all the high production values of year 2000 public access TV.  The main point of this video is to tell you that this is a big deal, and you should listen to the judge and his instructions, and try not to use any information you have at all, such as "what words mean" and "pretend to be impartial."  Once that's done, and you've filled out the form to ensure that you get the kingly sum of $1.32 that you're due for driving, you go upstairs and wait.

Finally you get to the courtroom, which is where the most boring part of things happens.  The judge gave a nice fifteen minute speech about the history of trials, juries, and how juries protect justice from blah blah blah blah blah.  Did you know that juries were invented in America?  That's not true, but that won't stop the judge from telling you that.  Hawaiian courts had jury trials too!  This is when they choose people.

They randomly select twelve people from the set of 55 that arrived (of the 66 summoned).  Then, after talking to all the jurors, they do three rounds of exclusions where the prosecution kicks someone out (for being a creepy fuck in one case), they refill the seat, talk again, and then the defense kicks someone out and they refill and talk.

This is super inefficient.  The first set for the full jury is like a half hour, and then each new addition took another ten-fifteen.  Why not just grab six new people, talk to them all, and then exclude?

They can also decide to approach the bench, which is secret code for "this lady doesn't answer any questions and just smiles like an idiot" or "this guy is clearly pretending not to speak English well".

The discussion was pretty easy to sort out what was going on.  The charges were assault, terroristic threatening, sexual assault 1, and sexual assault 3 (maybe 2.  The judge said both at different points).  The prosecution wanted to clearly establish that people could be the victim of a crime, even if they'd done stupid things previously, or if they didn't seem emotional.  Another big point was describing a bunch of scenarios (about half of which were objected to) that set up the concepts that consent is revocable, and that a single witness could provide a convincing case.  The defense wanted to make sure no one knew anyone who had been sexually assaulted, and that they didn't hate guns.  The other big push was to establish that sometimes, when something happens, you don't get to choose who your witnesses are, and that sometimes those witnesses are your friends and family.  "Do you think this biases them?"  Also some weird tangent about Snapchat and Instagram.  Explaining to old people what social media is is painful.

Yes, but no one would say that.  Everyone who ended up on the jury seemed to want to say things that made the court people happy, even if it was obviously untrue.  "Can you ignore these things and only make a decision based on what we tell you?"  "Yes, I think so."  Why?  Who wants to be there?  It's times like this that I remember that I don't deal with stupid people very often.

The majority of Hawaiian civic architecture is brutalist garbage, but this court at least had a good stained glass ceiling.

• I'm not going to mention who the defendant was, but based on this, I'm guessing he's probably guilty.  I'm guessing his girlfriend broke up with him, and he decided to force her to do things by pulling a gun.  
• Holy crap.  I'm glad this didn't end up worse.
• These are good portraits to remind us of when we had grown ups running the country.