By Jim Knipfel

When Morgan and I returned to my apartment one afternoon a couple of weeks ago, I found an official-looking envelope from King's County waiting in my mailbox.

"Aw, crap," I said. It looked like it was time for jury duty again.

Not that I have anything against jury duty, especially in New York. Last time I went, roughly six or seven years ago, I actually had a pretty funny time, and had no trouble—in principle at least—with the notion of performing my civic duty once again.

The problem was, I had too many knives hanging over me—doctors, deadlines, a half dozen impending and distracting things that were all wearing me down. Jury duty would hardly be the worst of them, but it was one more thing to add to the pile. Sometimes it's that One More Thing that can snag you.

We went upstairs, and as I put the groceries away, Morgan sat down at the kitchen table and took a peek in the envelope.

"Uh-oh," she said after a few moments of silence.

It wasn't jury duty after all. Instead, it was a subpoena. According to the computer-printed strip of cardstock, I was expected to appear in "Judicial Court," having been charged with blowing off jury duty in June of 2004.

The aggravating thing was, I hadn't. Not intentionally, anyway. If I'd received a jury duty notice I would've gone without (much) complaint, but I hadn't. My mail can be pretty spotty sometimes; only a few weeks ago, for instance, I learned that I hadn't received the previous month's phone bill, and so never paid it. Likewise, I never received that jury duty notice last June. As a result, I never went, and as a result of that, now I had to appear before a judge.

Who'd ever heard of someone being busted for skipping jury duty (intentionally or not)? I mean, you knew they had the right to nab you if you didn't show, but who'd ever heard of it actually happening? Last time I went and sat in the courthouse for three days; they kept calling Curtis Sliwa, but he never showed. You sure didn't hear anything about him getting his ass dragged into judicial court. (But then again, I've not really been paying close attention to Mr. Sliwa's comings and goings.)

I didn't know if I was going to be fined, scolded, made to serve double duty, or if they were going to ship me off to Rikers, but I'd find out soon enough: My appearance was set for 8:45 Friday morning.

They would have to believe me if I told them the truth about my innocence, right? I mean, even though as a nation we all stopped believing that crap in the 1920s, isn't it something we're all still supposed to believe? That innocence will prevail?

Suddenly I was having visions of being dragged out of a Brooklyn courtroom in chains, kicking and screaming. I began rehearsing the little speech I would make before the judge. I put things in order at work, unsure whether I'd be coming in the following Monday. In short, I got really stupid about the whole thing. So stupid, in fact, that before Morgan and I left for the courthouse, I changed into a clean shirt and pants, and even donned a tie. I hadn't worn a tie, I don't think, in at least 10 years.

After a brief altercation with an ill-mannered crackhead on the steps leading down to the N/R platform, we took the train to Court St., and emerged at the bottom of the courthouse steps. Having no idea how long it would be before I saw sunlight again, I had one last smoke before Morgan helped me up the steps and through the door.

I've always had trouble with security checks, but the guard in this case, catching sight of the cane sticking out of my pocket, asked Morgan, "Is he blind?"

She confirmed that I was, and that took care of everything,

The room we were directed toward was a dingy, fluorescent-lit affair that might've represented the platonic form of "bureaucratic efficiency." The handful of chairs in the room was taken by the time we got there, leaving the other 40 or 50 dregs and losers in attendance to just hang around, leaning against walls, not knowing what else to do. The phrase "jury of my peers" popped into my head and sent a chill through my bones.

About 20 minutes later, a woman who may well have been Penny Crone at her day job stood up and gave us all a collective scolding.

"You are here," she croaked, "because you have chosen to ignore two jury duty notifications which were sent to you in the mail…"

Morgan and I glanced at each other—two?

"…Because of that, you are all considered in contempt of court, and each of you is facing a fine of $250."

"Ah well," I thought. "Could be worse." But then she kept talking, and explained what the real deal was.

Namely, if we each chose one day within the next two months and came in to serve on that day, the fine and the charges would be dropped (or as she put it, "forgiven").

Given that I had nothing against going to jury duty, this was a cakewalk. So we all wrote a date down on a slip and turned it in.

But they weren't quite finished with us yet—that would've been way too easy. Next, we were sent back upstairs and told to take a seat in a courtroom, where we would be appearing before a judge.

Finally, I figured, I'll get a chance to make my speech.

Ten minutes after seating ourselves in the dim and shadowy courtroom on one of the most uncomfortable pews ever designed by man, Morgan noted that atop a filing cabinet at the front of the room, someone had arranged a line of dancing M&M figures.

"Sort of undermines the gravity of the whole situation, don't you think?" she asked.

We sat and waited for another 20 minutes or so, until finally a court officer marched to the front of the room and gave us the same speech Penny Crone had delivered downstairs. The scolding, the threat, the deal. Then he gave it again. But this time he added that, after we served that one day, we'd be excused from jury duty for the next six years.

"Serve just one day that you choose?" Morgan whispered. "That's better than answering the notice. I went and served all three days like a sucker."

I had to admit, it wasn't a bad deal at all. Who could've known?

When the court officer was finished, an elderly judge with the shakes hobbled out, took a seat, and, sure enough, gave the same damn speech yet again. This time around, offering us the opportunity to hire a lawyer to contest the fine if we felt we'd been accused unjustly.

Unjust or not, I was satisfied just the way things turned out. When the judge was done scolding us, we were all allowed to leave the room one by one, after our names were called. Sort of like in grade school.

Morgan and I left the courthouse with a mind toward having some lunch, confident in the system (sort of) again. I was a little disappointed that I never had a chance to give my speech, and was wondering why I'd ever bothered to wear a damn tie. And both Morgan and I continued to wonder how the hell two jury notices failed to arrive in my mailbox.