Astronomers have recently discovered that the moon has a molten heart that slowly slowly beats. The other thing that happened was, I got picked for jury duty. A lot of people when they hear the word Jury Duty instantly start talking about all sorts of devious ways to get out of it but if you’ve ever been on the other side of the docket you will understand the importance of an attentive and compassionate jury. I was looking forward to it, I figured it would be kind of like watching Law & Order live. So what happened was, I had to get up well before noon to go to the Compton Division of the L. A. County Superior Court in order to fulfill my civic obligation to sit in judgement of my fellow man. Luckily this happens to be “juror appreciation week” at the Compton Courtroom, which means that the vast echoing soulless fluorescent-lit green-vinyl-floored juror orientation room was decorated with a few streamers and balloons that underscored the relentlessly bleak and bureaucratic nature of the place. The Compton Superior Court is like this giant institutional skyscraper plopped randomly amongst a vast field of burned-out one-and-two story chicken joints and storefront churches. Some additional benefits of juror appreciation week were free slices of soggy pizza for lunch and a raffle in which the prizes were embarrassing, like plastic fireman’s hats and rubber hand-exercise balls with the name of a bail bonds company. Also someone won a xeroxed copy of the Magna Carta for some reason. Anyway finally they sent seventy of us off to the 11th floor to audition as jurors for the murder trial, which involved a residential home burglary in which a little old lady had been shot. Then there was a whole bunch of rigmarole about due process and constitutional amendments and the burden of proof, and then there was this part where people tried to weasel out of their civic responsibility in a number of ways. My advice to you if you get called for jury duty is: go ahead and serve, because it’s a serious thing to decide a man’s fate and also you might learn something. Unless it’s like some kind of 6-month OJ-dog-mauling thing in which case I would advise you to weasel out. Finally they started weeding us out as potential jurors, there’s this thing where each lawyer is trying to stack the deck with jurors who they believe will act in their favor – they ask you questions about your job and life experiences and arrest record in an attempt to get a lineup that is favorable to their agenda. And that is where my former life of crime paid off. |