Magazine mystery at courthouse

You can tell a lot about an office by what's offered in its waiting room.

People who need the services of a top criminal defense attorney can sit in the lobby of Kirk McAllister's downtown office, across from Tenth Street Place, and check out The Washington Post National Weekly Edition.

A few blocks away, near the Modesto Police Department, DUI fighters Richard Meyer and Ruben Villalobos treat their clients to daytime television.

For something truly different, one can wander into the basement of Stanislaus County Superior Court, where more than 12,000 residents who are called for jury duty can get a glimpse of Water Conditioning & Purification Magazine, Radiology Today and Dairy Herd Management magazine.

Jury duty is a proud tradition that keeps the power of government in check, but it usually involves a long, dull wait. Although the court does what it can to ease the boredom by providing bottled water, free local telephone calls and Internet access, the reading materials are a curiosity, at best.

"Powder and Bulk Engineering," quipped potential juror George Droogsma of Patterson, a transportation and operations manager who was busy working on his laptop. "Yeah, I'm into that!"

The jury assembly room has not one but two copies of Dentaltown, both from April 2007, featuring a cover story about a company that prospered by selling removable, see-through mouth plates to straighten teeth.

There's a special issue of Time devoted to the future of medicine.

Publication date: Jan. 11, 1999.

And an issue of YM promises beauty tips from pop singer Gwen Stefani. The story is ripped out, but that may not matter much, because the magazine is from March 2001, before Stefani's band, No Doubt, went on hiatus. Since then, she has gone solo, gotten married and had a baby, with her take on fashion evolving in the process.

Strict rules about delivery

The slim pickings prompt some lawyers, who pass through the jury assembly room to get to a courthouse coffee shop, to joke that the reading material must come from the dead letter files at the post office.

Not so, said Modesto Postmaster Cory Sandobal, because the U.S. Postal Service has strict rules about mail delivery.

Periodicals that cannot be delivered are returned to the sender, he said, while undeliverable mail that cannot be returned goes to a dead letter office in San Francisco. "If we can't return it or deliver it, we send it to the dead letter office," Sandobal said.

Just where the court got a 288-page directory of more than 7,400 artists who belonged to the Association of Performing Arts Presenters is a bit of a mystery.

Ditto for several other current publications aimed at niche markets, such as Brake & Front End: The Complete Undercar Service Magazine and the Ophthalmol-ogy Management Buyer's Guide.

During a recent visit to the jury assembly room, most of the magazines remained on the racks, untouched by potential jurors who watched one of three televisions tuned to news, struck up conversations with other potential jurors or read books they brought from home.

Meanwhile, magazines such as Formulary, a peer-reviewed drug management journal for managed care and hospital decision-makers, have become fodder for a minor controversy.

That's because court officials insist that they do get the periodicals from the dead letter file at the city's main post office on Kearney Avenue, where Sandobal works.

According to Joe Yniquez, the court's deputy jury commis- sioner, employees pick up new batches of undeliverable publications a few times each year. They toss out magazines that could offend, such as Playboy or Lowrider or periodicals with religious themes, then put the other goodies on the shelf.

There's no budget for reading materials.

"It's whatever they've got," Yniquez said.

Sandobal could not be reached for follow-up comment. Members of his staff said they do not share mail from the dead letter files, no matter how worthy a group's cause.

Arrangement in place for years?

Court employees said they periodically get calls from a postal clerk who has publications ready for disposal, adding that the arrangement has been in place for years.

So in the case of the jury room reading materials, the adage that one hand doesn't know what the other hand is doing may hold true.

Most of the 81,000 residents who are summoned for jury duty each year never have to come to the courthouse. They can check in by phone and need not report if civil disputes are resolved, plea deals are reached in criminal cases or trials get delayed.

But enough potential jurors to deliver verdicts in 125 or more trials must pass through the jury assembly room annually, often waiting for hours before courtrooms are ready for them.

They find magazine racks that are tidy -- and full of surprises.

As she waited along with a hundred or more other potential jurors, Christine McKeon of Turlock thumbed through a YM from 2004. She read a feature story about Orlando Bloom, written before he starred in any pirate movies. And she remained diplomatic about the jury duty experience.

"My expectations are kind of low," McKeon said. "So to actu-ally have magazines here, that's good."

Bee staff writer Susan Herendeen can be reached at sherendeen@modbee.com or 578-2338.