This isn't my favorite L.A. County courthouse. At other courthouses, they made it a point to make jurors feel welcomed and appreciated, but not so much over here. I came in on a Wednesday. The lady who processed us in the jury assembly room did not tell us her name. She was not overly friendly, and her instructions were not always that clear, but she did a decent job overall. After processing our forms, she told us to take a lunch break and report to the court department that afternoon. We waited outside the courtroom for a couple hours before the judge called us in just to tell us to return the following Monday at 2 p.m. for jury selection. (In all my previous experiences, jury selection began the first day we had to report.) The next morning, I tried calling the court clerk to ask some questions, but she told me to call back in the afternoon. When I did, one question I asked is why we had to report in the day before if they weren't even ready for jury selection, and she said honestly that she didn't have the answer to that. The following Monday, I went to work in the morning and then, drove fifty miles, racing to the Downey courthouse for jury duty. We waited 1.5 hours, dying of boredom, before the judge called us in to inform us that the case had been dismissed and that we were dismissed from jury duty. He explained to us that there was a lot happening behind the scenes, and he appreciated that we waited for so long.
There are many points for improvement. 1) First of all, if the court is not ready for jury selection, don't make jurors report in. That is a waste of their time. I could understand if the court thinks it will be ready for jury selection that day, calls in the potential jurors, but then, something happens last minute, and finds that it is not ready for jury selection after all. If that is the case, instead of making that same group return the following week, the judge should just dismiss that group and summon a group of potential jurors that is scheduled to report during the following week. 2) If the court clerk cannot answer the phone while a court case is in session, she needs to designate someone else to take on that responsibility. 3) Other courthouses give jurors a survey to get their input on how to improve the jury duty experience. The Downey Courthouse ought to do that, too. 4) The day that I first reported in for jury duty was the day after Nathan Hochman had been sworn in the replace George Gascon as Los Angeles County District Attorney. The sign should have been updated by then if the court were proactive, but I can understand if it wasn't. However, the following Monday when I returned, the sign still hadn't been updated. Does that mean that the Downey Courthouse does not recognize the will of L.A. County's voters? 5) The hand sanitizer dispensers were not working. The day after my first day of jury duty, I called the maintenance telephone number and asked to have them fixed. The woman said she would bring it to the attention of the janitorial staff. When I came back the following Monday, they still were not working. 6) After getting into one of the elevators, the doors don't close. The alarm just beeps, so the people have to get back out and go back in. The security officer said the manufacturer doesn't make the parts to fix the elevator anymore. I said they need to replace the elevator, but he said they don't have a million dollars to do that. That makes me wonder how taxpayer funds are being spent.
It seems to me that the Downey Courthouse is, more or less, in a state of disrepair, and employee morale is low. read more