Before I go point-by-point on my eight-day experience, let me say that no frustrations were borne out of the way I was treated by anyone actually working for the courts. The security officers and clerks and judges were all pleasant, at least seeming to be in a better mood than the general public, the significant majority of whom just wanted to get the hell out of there.

The Background: I'd never served on what you'd call a typical trial. Rather, in 1995, I served a month on federal grand jury. The job was simple: listen to a prosecuting attorney, and at least one witness, make a case for there being enough evidence to go to trial. I think every one involved a huge amount of drugs, informants, recovered weapons and the like. We rubber-stamped every one — these cases were more hardcore than Jenna Jameson — and none of the proceedings lasted more than an hour. Why did we have to serve a month? I have no fucking idea.

Reporting for Duty: On Nov. 1, I showed up at 111 Centre Street at 8:45 a.m. — way, way, way too early for me. The last time I was up at 7:30 a.m., I hadn't gone to sleep from the night before. Maybe the last five times. But I was serious about this. Because it takes about one minute surveying a room full of freaks to understand the importance of having at least some people with a brain deciding who's going to jail.

The Jury Pool: Of course, I wasn't the only one called for service. Maybe a couple hundred others also had to endure a long line in the lobby, where airport-style security screening was tighter than Andy Pettitte's and Roger Clemens' courtship. Camera phones were also checked at the front desk, lest we snap a picture of our fellow nose-picking jurors.

Once in the pool room, roll call was taken, and we waited. And waited. And waited. One of us sniffled 12 times a minute. Yep, I counted the number of times the annoying guy next to me sniffled per 60-second intervals. It was 12, or every five seconds — for hours. He was wearing a suit and a shirt with French cuffs. To jury duty. French cuffs. His look said, "I'm too important for this. I need to get to my job." But I didn't focus much on his looks, just the sniffles. Every five seconds. For hours. I had my juror's handbook, but it said nothing about a minimum sentence for first-degree murder. I was a little curious.

We sat in a main room, waiting for roll calls that would send us to a courtroom to be voir dired, a series of questions posed by a judge or attorneys for the purpose of evaluating potential jurors' neutrality. Most of us read newspapers or books, but there was also a TV room, where the show of choice was strictly first-come, first-served. And the winner: Springer! I'm sitting in Satan's Armpit next to a guy sniffling every five seconds (for hours!) a few feet from some mutant cackling at an episode of Springer! I would have almost rather watched a DVD of the 2004 World Series while Jared Fogle rubbed suntan lotion on my back. Hell on earth: Room 1024 at 111 Centre Street.

Time for My Audition: At 4 p.m., after sitting on my ass all day, save for a lunch break, I was one of 20 people called to select four final jurors for an assault case. One only has to last two days without being selected in order to complete service and be exempt for four years, and I had almost made it through half. I believe my exact words when called were, "Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Um, Here!"

I was in the first juror's seat, and the judge asked where I grew up, where I live and what I do ("You mean for fun?" I asked her). I was pressed directly and indirectly, by the judge and counsels, whether I could be unbiased, laughing when asked, "Do you think this man is likely to be guilty just because he's been charged with a crime?" Um, no, I'm not an idiot. She might as well have asked, "Look, do you want to be here or not?"

Potential jurors dropped like flies, as they admitted (perhaps even truthfully) bias in some form or another. Were they smarter than me? No, any fool can get out of jury duty. But they call it duty for a reason. I was in, as expected, as the final juror, with three others selected as alternates.

The Case: Interesting assault case stemming from a skirmish outside a nightclub at 3 a.m. on New Year's Eve. No uninterested witnesses (meaning, none who weren't already friends of the complainant or defendant). Here's what we know: the complainant snapped a picture of his compadre trying to buddy up with someone's wife. The wife wasn't having it. The wife's brother gets aggressive. Ends up with the brother getting knifed (stabbed, raked, cut — semantics played a big role here) by the complainant/photographer, who pleaded innocence based on self defense.

The Testimony: If you asked me to direct a movie based on this case, I'd have to shoot two versions and flip a coin as to which would be released. Four eye witnesses on the prosecutor's side tell one story: the complainant's friend put his arm around the defendant's sister, didn't take kindly to their protest, instigated them with more pictures, threw the sister to the ground and pulled the defendant off the complainant, who stabbed the complainant twice in the back.

The defense's version: The defendant was the physical instigator by punching the complainant's friend, his sister was never thrown to the ground, and he was "raked" in the back with a knife by the complainant, who saw no other way to avoid serious physical harm while on his back.

The Evidence: We got to see all the pictures taken on the defendant's digital cam, and of this I am sure: He's the worst photographer I have ever seen. Ever. But there were no photos that suggested anyone needed to be punched. In fact, there's no legal justification for punching anyone for taking any picture, ever. In fact, there was only one close-up picture of the defendant's friend with the complainant's group. A few others were taken down the street from the club, which convinced me, at least beyond a reasonable doubt, that the complainant pursued them down the street to cause trouble.

Miscellaneous Case Notes: About 15 people attended the case daily in support of the defendant. Family members, including his parents, siblings, cousins, grandparents, whomever. That's not supposed to influence a jury, and I don't think it did for me, but clearly that's a bit of gamesmanship suggested by the defense attorney to help elicit sympathy. No one showed for the complainant. I had sympathy for no one but the family members. They were the only ones who didn't get into some stupid fight on New Year's Eve. We could not talk about the case till deliberations, not with fellow jurors, not with anyone. It was hell. One evening, I took an elevator alone with the prosecutor. We just stared at the floor. How uncomfortable.

The best part: The defendant's friend, after the two were tracked down by cops and arrested a few blocks away, puked in his cell that night. Thirty-four-year-old man can't go out on New Year's Eve without jumping into pictures with strangers and puking. In deliberations, we all found him guilty of being an asshat.

The Deliberations: We were to decide on three counts: assault in the first degree, attempted assault in the first degree, and assault in the second degree. I thought we'd be in there for maybe 30 minutes.

The testimony, in my eyes, was crap. No two witnesses corroborated anything that was said. A lot of, "I can't recall what was said" and "I'm not sure where everyone was standing at the time." It's not that I didn't think the defendant could have been guilty of excessive force or that his stupid friend may have first struck the defendant's sister, it's that neither was proven to me, because this was, in effect, a case of he said-she said.

When our initial vote turned out to be split down the middle, I was floored. Did these people know what reasonable doubt means? There was no way it was proven that the defendant was not under threat of serious, or potentially deadly, physical injury — the justification for using deadly force, which we weren't even sure a rather minor knife wound was (though, clearly, a knife in itself is a deadly object). Trying to hammer the point home, I told the jury that, if it would help them decide, I would go out and have eight drinks, force one of them to the ground and start throwing punches. And we'll see if they felt obliged to grab a legal knife residing in their pocket.

We needed three hours of deliberations Thursday to conclude we were stuck. I returned Friday morning and said to a fellow juror, "Today is really gonna suck." Having wiped out the first two counts, we were deadlocked on the third: 5 guilty, 4 not guilty, 3 undecided. That's when I went to work. We asked for re-reads and to see evidence, but I kept saying, "It hasn't been proven to me that the defendant was not under threat of very serious physical injury." Almost everyone kept an open mind, save a couple of men on both sides who seemed more interested in their books. Reading during deliberations: not helpful. But we weren't getting anywhere. We were basically locked in a windowless room for 9 hours and, again, it was hell. How 12 people can agree on anything with such subjective terms as "reasonable" and "excessive" to define, I have no idea. In the end, we were 8 not guilty, 2 guilty and 2 undecided. After 12 hours of deliberations, we had a mistrial on the final count, and I guess it might be re-tried.

I felt like we'd failed but, at the same time, people on both sides held firm on their decisions. Some people think that using a knife against an unarmed man was a crime under any circumstances. I may have agreed if I understood the true circumstances better. But 3 a.m. on New Year's Eve is not a time most people recall with clarity. And I couldn't convict a man for defending himself against another who let alcohol affect his reaction to a picture being taken of his sister. (What, a sober man would start a fight over this?) In my eyes, they were both losers, and both had at least lost a bit already, with (thankfully) minor injuries and embarrassment in the eyes of their families.