Justice is Served- Part I

It's never easy sitting in judgment of another person. To be sure, we do it all the time on an informal basis: this man's cruel, that one is manipulative. This man's conniving, that one is dangerous. But enough about Cheney and Rumsfeld. The formal judgment process in New York City begins the day you receive the dreaded orange and white jury summons in the mail.

I have had the dubious pleasure of being suggested, ingested, digested, and finally divested from the New York criminal justice system for five out of the past eight days. Not as a "bad guy", rest assured; but as what the judges and various courthouse video dignitaries call the "indispensable element of our criminal justice system"- the juror. Now don't get me wrong, I do enjoy the feeling for once in my life of being "indispensable", but seriously- don't you think that the only indispensable element would be the actual criminal, without whom none of this other nonsense would be necessary?

I suppose that my name was suggested to the court system by the voter registration board. In the spirit of "no good deed ever goes unpunished", my civic good deed of registering to vote was swiftly punished by additional mandatory good deeds to appear as a potential juror. My one, measly little blue-tinted vote was apparently no counterbalance against the hordes of God-fearing, morally upright citizenry turning this beautiful country Redder by each election. But d'ya know what? It was worth it. Striking a feeble but ultimately ineffectual blow against those dirty, lousy Reds (does anyone else get the historical irony of this political color palette?) was a fair tradeoff to 5 days of boring jury duty.

Ingestion is the process of being selected as an actual juror from a pool of hundreds of other potential jurors. On reporting day, all potential jurors report to Room 336 where they, well... they sit. Sit and wait. The jury pool is supposed to be an accurate cross section of New Yorkers, but it looked to me to be suspiciously divided between male normal people and female normal people. The loonies, dysfunctionals, ultra-hips, hillbillies and Captains of Finance seemed to be disproportionately under-represented from the mix of juror wannabes. To inform and entertain us while we waited, no less a dignitary than Dianne Sawyer hosted a public service video highlighting the importance of jury service. The cynical side of me (yes folks, there is a cynical side to me) immediately wondered if Ms. Sawyer performed this video as a true public service or because, um, she was sentenced to do it by a judge for repeatedly ignoring her own jury summonses? Enquiring minds want to know...


My hopes remained high until the end of the second day, when my name was called along with about 100 others to serve on a jury panel from which 12 jurors and 4 alternates would be chosen. About a 15% random chance of selection, but I was soon to see that selection was anything but random. First, people who claimed they did not speak English well enough were allowed to plea for excusal. A reasonable excuse, it seemed; and though I was tempted to let my Pittsburgh accent honk on through as proof that I had absolutely no command of the English Language, I decided to defer to the hardcore Spanish and Chinese speakers.

Next, those people with a special "hardship" were allowed to plead their case for excusal privately before the judge. The little chippie girl sitting next to me who owned a nail salon rushed up to Her Honor and tittered a few things, then promptly sashayed her hips out of there on excusal, with a look on her face that proclaimed "well of course skin and nail responsibilities are more important than anything you could possible have to do". Most of the remaining Type A Men and UES-looking women managed to come up with something adequately urgent to be excused as well, leaving the Curmudgeon wracking his brain for something, anything, that could get him off the hook.

My anything excuse opportunity came up in the last session, where each of the remaining 50 or so jurors were asked a series of qualifying questions. One of these questions inquired whether the juror had any "moral objection" to serving on a criminal case. Since it was to be a trial of a two-bit heroin dealer, many of my fellow New Yorkers jumped on this opportunity to repeatedly assure the judge that they were so morally opposed to drug laws that was simply no way they could impartially serve on a jury, so very sorry. I was tempted to jump up and scream "well, then what have you actually done in the past year to protest these horrible laws? Have you written a letter to your Congressman? Have you made a contribution to NORML??? Have you carried a sign in protest??? Or, did you decide to save up all of your righteous indignation about NYC drug laws for the one opportunity where it would do the most good, ie- getting you out of jury duty?!?!?!?!?"

The Curmudgeon is no fan of many drug laws, either. And he is no enemy of anyone who has a righteous cause and the guts to stand up for it. But when it came my turn and I had to decide between insincere whining about moral objections, and taking my chances with the roulette wheel of selection, I held my tongue...

After all of this, there were only about 25 folks left to choose from- more like a 60% chance. Back out in the hallway, waiting for the judge and attorneys to make their fateful selections, I struck up a brief conversation with someone who would ultimately become known as "Juror Number Four". She looked at me with extraordinary eyes that transformed her pretty face into a strikingly beautiful face, and solemnly proclaimed "I am gonna get picked. And so are you".

She was right, on both counts. More later on the trial itself.