You Are NOT Excused? [irked]
In normal places, being a lawyer will get you out of jury duty. Most places, you don’t even have to show up to be struck for being a lawyer; you can just mail in a form with your bar number. Not in DC. Here, we’re half lawyers. Still, you’d think they wouldn’t seat anyone who works in federal criminal prosecution… Nope. Wrong again. I can’t believe they empannelled me. Not that I mind, mind you. In many ways, this week will be more interesting than what work had to offer.
Actual substantive stuff on the case is verboten until it’s over, but I did have some first-hand observations concerning jury selection as a teaser. It’s at least as rivoting as sitting through the jury selection process:
1. Word-hunt games remain IN among DC residents. Not crosswords, but the jumbles where you find a list of words among the nonsense letters? Yes. Several adults were doing these.
2. Shallow, almost tantric breathing is a useful skill, because the person sitting to your right has a rare strain of The Consumption; they will cough for most of the morning before being dismissed just before lunch (presumably for medical reasons).
3. As mentioned, everyone in DC is a lawyer, and being a lawyer will not get you off the jury. If you did want off the jury, may I suggest: (a) believing that an indictment is evidence of guilt, (b) knowing the defendant, defense counsel, prosecutor, or witnesses, if possible, carnally; or (c) having recently been a criminal defendant yourself and remaining pissed about it. These all came up.
4. Why are the Sudoku’s that stump me always marked as “easy”?
5. The judge may ask a member of the jury pool in open court “now there are friends and there are FRIENDS… just how well do you know [some person who was in law enforcement]?” If asked, don’t respond “we’re professional friends” because that’s meaningless and still leaves everyone wondering whether you slept with your “friend” or not. We all know the answer’s probably no, and that you wished it were otherwise. But maybe we’re reading a lot into it since we’ve been here for three hours.