When I was first called to jury duty in 1977 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, we reported to the jury room every week day (and stayed all day) for a month. Even if you served on a trial you were sent back to the jury room until the end of the month. We played a lot of cards, pitched pennies down the hall and gave each other nicknames. Every now and then they’d call numbers and the chosen potential jurors would be led up to a courtroom by a guy carrying a pole. Usually you ended up back in the jury room.