May 11, 2009
Leave me the F__k alone
I, ERIK ANTHONY SLYE, being first duly sworn upon oath, depose and say that jury service would entail undue hardship on me and that I request to be excused from jury service for the following reasons:
Apparently you morons didn’t understand me the first time. I CANNOT take time off from work. I’m not putting my familys well being at stake to participate in this crap. I don’t believe in our “justice” system and I don’t want to have a goddamn thing to do with it. Jury duty is a complete waste of time. I would rather count the wrinkles on my dogs balls than sit on a jury. Get it through your thick skulls.
Leave me the F__k alone.
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I don’t want your bourgeois jury service.
America rocks!
Okay, it’s time for me to re-tell my jury duty story, since we have so many new people here. I wanted to be on the jury at first, I really did. Civic duty and all that. Thought–hell, someday I might end up on trial, and where would I be if everyone like me tried to get out of serving on my jury? That God Bless America feeling lasted until the voir dire went into its second hour, as potential juror after juror asked one inane question after another, all the while interjecting “I don’t know, that’s just how I feel” into situations that do not require one to Feel anything, but rather, Think. They simply could not grasp the fact that Driving Under The Influence does not mean that a person is necessarily drunk or using illegal drugs. A person can be Under The Influence if his prescription drugs cause delayed reactions while driving, for instance. And they just couldn’t understand that. “I don’t know, I just feel that you need to be really drunk to be accused of DUI. I need to see proof.” So I’m sitting there listening to all of this when the guy with the mullet raised his hand and said–with that air of “I gotcha now” smugness that only a man with a blond mullet can muster–”I got a question. So what if someone’s, like, bipolar or something and isn’t taking their medicine? What is it then?”
And that is when I lost all control and said, “In that case, the charge would be Driving While Bipolar and we’d be in CRAZY COURT.” The judge said, “Ms. Scroggins,” but she started laughing, and the lawyers and even the defendant were laughing, and a few of the asshole jurors were laughing, and I didn’t have to serve that day.
Hurrah!
I do love that story, Cindy, and I love CRAZY COURT, and so does my friend Lee, and that, as you know, is why she spoke of CRAZY COURT when telling The Tale of the Bourgeois Divorce.
CRAZY COURT rocks! Bourgeois Divorce Rocks!
i for one wish there was a proper and separate Crazy Court, as an adjunct to our legal system. can’t pass a basic logic / common sense exam prior to your criminal hearing? YOU GO TO CRAZY COURT!!!
There to be tried by a jury of your CRAZY PEERS!
I do hope for a jury of crazy peers. That’s all I got to hang onto.
Don’t stop believin’, Cind.
Gracias, amiga.
Sheila, someday when you can stomach being in Texas, I hope you can find a way to introduce me to Lee.
You bet I will, Cindybaby. You will love her, I know. (And: She can spout Eudora Welty like noboby’d bidnis.)
Things I actually heard while serving on jurries:
“So what’s the verdict going to be? I’m for anything that gets me out of here by (…looks at his watch…) two o’clock.”
“I think he has to be guilty or the police wouldn’t have stopped him.”
–”But mam, you haven’t heard any of the evidence yet.”
“Well, still, that’s just how I always feel about that kinda thang.”
“They set him up. Waitin on him to drive away like that just because he was passed out in the Jack In The Box drive through line.”
“They say he’s been convicted two times before for DWI, but we didn’t get to see those trials.”
I don’t suppose these people had any problems advocating torture, either, since “common sense” jus tales yoo whut’s whut.
Daryl has served on a lot of juries. You should see his face afterward–sad, sad, sad.
I have been on only one jury: a brief trial to establish competence. It was both heartbreaking and heartening. The defendant was clearly incapable of undergoing trial, and even the prosecution advocated that we find him incompetent. I was the foreman of that jury and worried that someone would hold out, but everyone was reasonable and even empathetic. The saddest part was seeing the man’s mother, who was sitting outside the courtroom wearing a thin cotton dress and a straw hat with faded plastic flowers on it, wringing her hands.
You can bet there was a lifetime of hand wringing, behind that glimpse.
Yes.