Weblog Sin Pies

By Charley Daniels

I’m not a juror. I was never even called up for questioning, which is frankly a little insulting, because the court didn’t even get to hear what I have to offer. So do you think they really got the best possible jury? Of course not. Because they didn’t get me.

But I learned a lot about jury duty during the two days I spent in court. The most important is that if you aren’t ashamed to make a fool of yourself, you can avoid serving on a jury. Without fail, everybody who came off like a complete dipshit was dismissed. Whether they were intentionally trying to avoid service or they really are dipshits is not up to the court to decide, apparently.

A friend last night brought up another thing I couldn’t help thinking the whole time: The right to a trial by a jury of our peers and whatever is one of those things we as a society hold in sort of high regard, yet when it comes time for us to be a part of that system, the best many of us can do is address a room full of strangers, telling stories about being biased against the police because they harass us for walking our dog without a leash. Long fucking stories. For example.

And you wouldn’t believe how many people viewed the jury selection process as an opportunity to espouse some personal convictions about our legal system, our media, and/or our society as a whole. They seemed to think they were being really philosophical and politically conscious, when really all they were doing was failing to understand simple questions and wasting everyone’s time.

I hope I’m never a defendant, is all I’m saying.

The highlight of the experience for me was when they finally chose the 12 who would be the jury, because it came very abruptly, and it’s generally funny when people are caught off guard. The attorneys were taking turns dismissing people, back and forth, and when they got down to 12 people and neither attorney had any more to excuse, the judge suddenly turned to the people in the jury box and said, “Stand and be sworn.” There was no, “Okay, I think we have our 12.” Or any other indication that the time had come, just this official command. Stand and be sworn, bitches. The people in the jury box looked really bewildered, like they’d accidentally wandered in thinking it was the restroom and now suddenly they were on a jury.

So I guess it’s back to the regular old grind for me today. Well, at least today and tomorrow, and then we have a long holiday weekend. I better be careful, or going back to work for a full week is going to be too difficult.

By Charley Daniels

Heading back to jury selection in the morning. I won’t be Twittering this time, at least not regularly. Maybe an update here or there, but since I’ll mostly be in the courtroom tomorrow I don’t see there being much of a chance for me to post. Especially since I’ll be so busy catching up on my sleep.

Speaking of stinky pee, asparagus has been in the news a lot lately. Scientists recently announced that the soil on Mars is perfect for growing the vegetable:

Soil on Mars ‘good for asparagus’

There is still no answer to the old question of whether there has ever been life on Mars, but apparently there could be vegetable life.

Guess we know what we’ll be eating after we have to abandon earth in the next decade or so. Or maybe not:

Dodgy asparagus sauce killed restaurant diner

81-year-old William Hodgins died just hours after dining with his wife at the up market Tables restaurant in Pymble last year. An inquest has today found it was a pathogen in the asparagus sauce, served with his fish that killed him.

Well, back to the drawing board. Maybe the soil on Venus is perfect for growing some other vegetable?

By Charley Daniels

Looks like things are working around here for the most part (site was broken yesterday). That’s good, because I’ve got some things to say. Like, I bet you didn’t know I spent yesterday on jury duty, which was interesting. It wasn’t the first summons I’ve received, but it was the first time I’ve ever had to appear.

Every lying asshole I talked to told me, “Oh, yeah, don’t worry. You’ll just sit there all day and then go home.” Which actually didn’t sound too bad. I planned to get some work done, read a little, make some friends. You know, typical day off stuff. I just had to stay in a room. How hard could that be? Not hard at all, it turns out, until about an hour in when I got called for the very first panel.

That actually worked out well, because I got to take a two-hour lunch while the people who couldn’t serve on a jury for the next two weeks had to tell it to the judge. By “it,” I mean they had to explain why they couldn’t serve on a jury for two weeks. I tried to quickly think of a good reason, but I had nothing. Jaxon suggested I should have just lied, which is a good point, but I’m glad I didn’t, because then I wouldn’t have had such a long lunch.

So after my luxurious break, I went back for jury selection. It’s a process I’d describe as frustratingly deliberate, punctuated by moments of something straddling the gap between pure genius and the highest level of dip-shittery.

I’m just in the general pool; I haven’t been called up to answer questions. But I have to go back Monday, owing to the thorough nature of the proceedings and the exhaustive replies by the 24 people who are currently being questioned. Everyone understands, it seems, that the more you talk, the likelier you’ll say something that one of the attorneys doesn’t like.

A few have taken a more direct approach, declaring their bias against this or that, but each time they wilt under the judge’s inevitable grilling on the subject: “Do you think you would be able to put aside your personal feelings and render a verdict without prejudice, based on the evidence presented?” Sheepish replies, all of them, but they all say yes.

It’s like watching children trying to bring down an elephant with sticks. Running in hesitantly, swatting a leg, getting kicked back. There’s always one that won’t give up, and such was the case during this selection. Each time he’d try a fresh angle of the “I don’t think I can put aside my bias” approach, which is actually sort of, I don’t know, admirable if his only goal is to be excused. Because unless he’s really stupid (which obviously could be the case) he has to know how bad he looks using the “Your honor, I’m too prejudiced to serve as a juror” line. He was relentless.

The subtle approach is way better, I think. One of the questions is whether we’ve ever served on a jury before and whether or not that jury reached a verdict, to which one lady’s response was: “I have served on a jury before, and the verdict was guilty.” I’d lay odds she’ll be released by the defense attorney on Monday based on that one answer alone.

They haven’t excused anyone yet, but they’re choosing 15 out of about 80, so there’s a good chance I won’t even be questioned, let alone picked. We’ll see Monday.

Oh, and if this treatise wasn’t detail enough for you, I Twittered jury duty live, as it happened. For the most part.