"The Juror Is Out"

By Jerry Zezima

If I am ever put on trial for committing crimes against journalism, a charge for which I am clearly guilty, I’d get off by pleading insanity. Besides, my lawyer is in jail.

Maybe that’s why I wasn’t selected when I was called — not once but twice — for jury duty.

When I spoke with the commissioner of jurors for an explanation, I found out he is the only such official in the state with — holy jurisprudence! — a Batphone.

“I’m like Commissioner Gordon in the old ‘Batman’ TV series,” John Nunziata, the commissioner of jurors in Suffolk County, New York, said as he pointed to the red telephone on a table in his office.

“Do you get calls from the Caped Crusader?” I asked.

“I can’t divulge that information,” the commissioner (Nunziata, not Gordon) said with a smile.

“Then maybe you can tell me why I wasn’t chosen to sit on a jury each time I was called,” I said. “I was insulted.”

“It’s nothing against you,” Nunziata assured me. “It’s a sheer math thing. There’s a jury pool of over 700,000 people. We can get 2,300 jurors a week. You were on standby. If you actually had to come in for a civil case, lawyers would select jurors. If they didn’t pick you, that really would have been a rejection.”

“I guess so,” I said. “But what about my second summons? That was for a grand jury.”

“You would have loved it,” Nunziata said. “It can last a month and there are secret proceedings. You can’t talk about it to anybody. A grand jury decides if a crime has been committed and if charges are brought.”

“Like on ‘Law & Order’ and all those other crime shows?” I wondered.

“I don’t watch them,” said Nunziata, adding that I was “duped into the system” after my first jury duty summons and wouldn’t have been eligible to serve on a grand jury.

“Can I file a peremptory challenge?” I asked.

“Only a lawyer can do that,” Nunziata explained.

“How about a voir dire?” I asked again.

“Same thing, except a judge can also reject a potential juror,” he explained again. “How do you know this stuff?”

“I’ve been admitted to many bars,” I said.

Nunziata knows his stuff, too. He has been in the court system for 36 years, starting as an officer and working his way up to sergeant before “getting out of the uniform” and becoming commissioner of jurors eight years ago.

“I love my job,” said Nunziata, who’s 65 and has no plans to retire.

He has seen pretty much everything.

“People will make up any excuse to get out of jury duty,” he said. “They’ll come in kicking and screaming. But once they’re selected, most of them find it to be a rewarding experience.”

Defendants are innocent until proven guilty, he said, but sometimes they don’t help their own cases.

“I heard of a guy who was arrested for stealing a Miami Dolphins jersey,” Nunziata remembered. “He wore it to court.”

“You can’t fix stupid,” I pointed out.

Then I asked the commissioner if he had ever been called for jury duty.

“Yes,” he said. “It was for federal jury duty. I went with my paperwork and was told to take a seat. When it was my turn, the judge said, ‘What do you do for a living?’ I said, ‘I’m the commissioner of jurors in Suffolk County.’ The judge said, ‘That’s enough.’ I said, ‘I’ve been trying to tell you for an hour.’ I was dismissed.”

“Were you disappointed?” I asked.

“No,” Nunziata admitted.

Even though I am not eligible to be called for jury duty for another six years, I could volunteer after two years.

“It’s a civic duty,” I said.

“What if you’re not selected again?” Nunziata asked.

“Holy voir dire!” I exclaimed. “I’ll call you on the Batphone.”

Copyright 2026 by Jerry Zezima