7 Angry Men (and Women)

I finally got tagged for jury duty. I've been sent notices before and avoided them, even avoided those pesky warrants claiming I could be arrested for not serving but this time I went. New York County Criminal Court no less. I was told to arrive no later than 8:45 yesterday. I dropped my daughter off at school at 8:45 and then proceeded to the courthouse, arriving, roughly, 20 minutes late. I figured I'd explain to the court that I have two kids, two parents and we split the morning delivery duty up so that both kids can be in school on time and, if the court doesn't like it, the court can kiss my McNoogin.

I arrived late and nobody said a word.

Then I figured I'd give them the sob story of how I'm self employed and I have no employees and sitting in the jury pool for days will cost me thousands of dollars in lost revenue and that I find everyone there to be guilty of something and there's no way I can be fair and impartial when I'm pissed off at the system for making me lose money and I'm positive that the individual on trial must have done something wrong because cops don't arrest a totally innocent individual who has led an exemplary life. Let's face it, if your life is pure and honest and the cops can't find one person who will tell them you did something wrong, how can they arrest you for something that isn't a total slam dunk with evidence? They can't. Richard Kimball would have never would have been arrested. There was evidence but his history was such that sainthood was inevitable.

Anyway, I tried to plead my case and the jury guy told me he was going to push the self employed folks thru as quickly as possible.

They call the first pool and my name is the third one called.

DWI case. 2 days tops. Ok, I can sit thru an hour of questioning and figure out how to get thrown out.

I tried. I did. I said I know former US Attorneys, DEA agents, District Attorneys, an elected official, a judge and several courthouse employees (all true). Will it cloud my judgement? No. I'm sure that my beliefs would not be swayed as I feel fairly strongly about the people who get arrested. I tell them I believe drunk drivers should be penalized harshly for their crime.

Still I get picked.

Ok, fine. How much arguing can a lawyer do when there is a breathalyzer result that is damning (.18 almost 4 hours after the arrest), a video of the defendant being unable to complete the physical tasks etc.

The defense lawyer was retarded. He argued some seriously stupid shit. It was so bad that a group of law students or interns sitting in the back row of the room cringed and gasped whenever her went with one of his inane side roads of stupidity.

The case was pretty simple. Dumb, drunk woman, who was kinda hot, drove the wrong way on a major bridge. To make it to the ramp she entered, she would have had to do some seriously fucked up driving. Add to that she was on a small island between Manhattan and Queens and she was heading towards Queens when she got stopped. She was trying to get to Hoboken. That's in the exact opposite direction, downtown and west of where she was. She was so fucking wrong in all areas that the idea of her fighting any of this was comical.

Still, we endured the testimony of two cops.

Still, we had to watch a video of this woman attempt to walk a straight line.

Still, we had to hear how, when asked to recite the alphabet from C to M, her response was "C M."

Why this woman wasted everyone's time is beyond me.

This morning, the DA's third witness was an hour late and the judge told the DA to continue without the witness. A plea bargain was then reached.

Then the bailiff told us we were done for 6 years and he was shocked to see them plea out the case as the deal wasn't so good and he asked us where we stood with a verdict if the testimony we heard was all we were going to hear.
Guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty,guilty, innocent.

What?

Seriously?

Some dude said he thought she was innocent. He said that he had a parking ticket filled out wrong once and the paperwork was kind of messed up on this one and, therefore, perhaps she wasn't guilty.

What about the 0.18 blood alcohol? The numbers alone are procedural. She was guilty based on that alone.

Oh, well, those machines might not be accurate.

Fortunately, we didn't have to sit thru a session of arguing with this moron who admitted he had no job, nothing to do now that his duty ended early and he was kind of enjoying the legal process.

I told the guy I'd have hung him out the window by his ears until he changed his vote.
Another guy said he'd have helped.

Then we got into a somewhat heated but friendly argument over how stupid this guy was, even though he had the right to argue against us.

Finally, after about 10 minutes of this I stood up and said I would love to continue the debate when we next meet, hopefully by coincidence in Disneyland. I stood and left, confident that the legal system is totally fucked up and one hundred percent positive that I will never, ever, sit thru that bullshit again.