I attended jury selection yesterday morning in person at the Woodland California Courthouse. To my dismay I found that the safety measures being taken at the courthouse with respect to covid are lacking to the point that I wanted to, and should have, left immediately upon entering the jury services space (a large open room with immovable rows of chairs. Basically, there are NO safety precautions being taken to protect the public or the county employees. There are many problems, but here are a few of the most egregious:

• No attempt was made to screen out ill people. There was no temperature testing, no questions, no option to leave if ill, nothing. We were mandated by law to attend in person without any offers or suggestions about what to do if not feeling well.
• No attempt was made to keep people separated in the rooms (both the jury services room or the jury selection room). It was just open seating without any attempt to keep people separated. Most people complied, but not everyone. The ones that appeared to be most “questionable” about whether or not they follow safety guidelines are the ones that most often violate the separation distance guidelines as well. In fact, in the jury selection room people were seated shoulder-to-shoulder with zero separation and absolutely no way of taking personal changes of the situation without being deemed in contempt of court.
• The ventilation system in the jury services room is not adequate to control potential exposure One indication of this is that it was easy to smell perfume and other odors on people seated on the far side of the room. That means that aerosols are lingering in the room and traveling to all people. The smells travel as aerosols exactly the same way as covid infected breath generated aerosols do, so if you can smell another person you can be infected by the other person. The masks provide zero protection from these aerosols, and almost no reduction in their creation.
• The only bathrooms are available at the break, meaning that the rooms are packed with people in a very small room with zero separation between anyone and close to zero ventilation in the short term. No sanitation or means to enforce separation were in evidence. It was either potentially expose yourself to the virus, or “hold it”. This is extremely risky.

There are more problems, but I think this enough to get the point across that the safety during these events it totally inadequate. I think it is a travesty that County has decided to expose so many citizens and employees at this time during the pandemic. This practice should absolutely be stopped ASAP.

By the way, I ended up catching a cold during this four hour period of time. If I could catch a cold I could have much easier have caught covid (which is MUCH more contagious). Perhaps we will all be lucky and there were no contagious people present and therefore no cases will come from this little “super spreader” event, but that is not through anything that the County did to protect people.

I think in person trials should be halted until proper protections are implemented.