From the moment the summons arrived, I had anticipated my jury service with a sense of dread. The thought of spending hours in a crowded jury assembly room followed by intrusive questioning by lawyers and judges didn't exactly put me in the holiday spirit. So--like many of my fellow prospective jurors--I was somewhat grumpy as I showed up at the Clara Shortridge Foltz Criminal Justice Center in downtown Los Angeles on Tuesday.

I'd been to the courthouse a million times before--most notably during the so-called "trial of the century" when I was in a courtroom to witness the reading of the "not guilty" verdicts in the O.J. Simpson murder trial. But it's one thing to be a dispassionate observer as verdicts are delivered, quite another, I imagined, to be one of the jurors who contributes to a verdict. What would it feel like to sit in judgment of another human being, knowing my vote could help to send a person to prison or even death? As it turned out, I would not find out this time around. I was excused from jury service on Thursday afternoon before the jury was impaneled.

Still, I appreciated the experience (can't quite bring myself to say I enjoyed it but I did appreciate it) because I had a chance to meet some interesting people, I heard about their lives and businesses and their favorite restaurants (looking forward to having the Hollenbeck burrito at El Tepeyac Cafe in Boyle Heights one of these days). And I got to see firsthand the hard work being performed every day at the courthouse by so many people. It also reminded me of the gang violence that plagues our communities even as crime rates are going down in Los Angeles. That's because I almost made it onto the jury in a murder trial in an alleged gang shooting. More on that in a moment, but first a bit about my jury duty experience.

I spent the morning of my first day in the jury assembly room--a huge room with chairs organized in rows where we listened to a judge talk to us about the importance of jury service in a democratic society. We watched a video that told us about the restaurants and museums and shopping opportunities in downtown Los Angeles. I read the sections of the New York Times Sunday paper and magazine that I hadn't had a chance to read last weekend. Then, it was time for lunch. I walked to Little Tokyo to meet a friend during my 90 minute lunch break.

Upon returning, I was dispatched with 40 or so other prospective jurors to Department 122, Judge Craig Veals presiding. Judge Veals struck me as a thoughtful and patient jurist with a kind face. It was only after I'd been released from my jury service that I googled him and learned that in 2005, he slapped a prospective juror like me with a $1,000 fine (later reduced to $100) for yawning too loudly in his courtroom. According to the Los Angeles Times, as Juror 2386 waited for lawyers to question him, Judge Veals said: "You yawned rather audibly there. As a matter of fact, it was to the point that it was contemptuous." When the juror apologized that he "was really bored," the judge found him in contempt and said: "Your boredom just cost you $1,000."  By my second and third afternoons of watching my fellow prospective jurors being questioned (after waking on those days at 4:30 A.M. and anchoring the morning news), I wanted to yawn, too. Fortunately, I didn't yawn loudly enough to catch the attention of Judge Veals. I understood though why Judge Veals might not appreciate the lack of focus. Because while jury duty is a mere annoyance to most of us, it can literally be life and death for the defendants and justice or no justice for the victims and their families.

The judge, the prosecutor and the defense attorney in the trial I was being considered for were all eager to know how each prospective juror felt about gangs and whether they could be fair to the defendant if they learned he was "associated with gangs."  That's because the case of "The People of the State of California v. Jose Almando Alatriste" is a murder trial of a young man charged with using a semi-automatic handgun to commit murder and attempted murder "for the benefit of, at the direction of, and in association with a criminal street gang," as I later learned from court documents. In short, it was a violent gang-related crime that in many cities across America would have been front page news. In Los Angeles however, it was just one of the many trials underway involving gang violence. Only the most heinous of those crimes ever make the news in L.A. In this case, I was the only reporter present in the courtroom and I was there as a civilian. This trial wasn't going to be covered. As Deputy District Attorney Bradley Lieberman assured the prospective jurors, there would be no sequestration in this trial, no media hounding the jurors for interviews after the verdict.

It made me think about the thousands of victims of gang violence in Los Angeles and their family members who quietly sit through trials that most of us will never hear about. It made me think that while most of us see jury duty as a burden, it really is the important civic duty we've all been taught to believe it is. When we step in to a courtroom as jurors, we are not only participating in democracy, we are honoring those victims of crime whose deaths or wounds were not deemed worthy of news coverage. We are honoring the police officers and prosecutors who are trying to put away the perpetrators of those crimes. We honor those working in the court system to keep it operating even as they suffer cutbacks that make their jobs and their personal lives more difficult. And we honor the defendants and their attorneys when the defendant is wrongly accused. The trial is their one shot to have a jury of their peers see the truth.

Don't get me wrong--the system ain't perfect and I'm sure there's plenty that could be fixed. For example, too many of my fellow prospective jurors were going to lose money as prospective or actual jurors because in today's economy, many of them are part-time workers or freelance workers whose only compensation is the $15 per day plus mileage we all receive beginning on the second day of jury service. According to Mary Hearn, the deputy public information officer for the Los Angeles County Superior Court, 14,503 people were excused for "financial hardship" in 2008-2009. But with 3,035,631 summons being mailed out, how many people are being forced to sit on a jury when they really need to be working to feed their families.

I'm sure some of you have thoughts on what else is wrong or right with jury duty. I'd be interested to hear about your jury duty experiences and your thoughts on how things could be improved.