Tuesday, May 26, 2015

Civic Duty: ✔

Clichéd image because unrelated images from elsewhere on this log show on sucky Facebook when I link crap there.
Why do I bovver?
O.K., so effing bored (NUMB, even.) I'll resolve the jury duty story before someone falls off the edge of a seat: First (or second; even now it fades) peremptory challenge by the A.D.A., after only a little back & forth w/ his honor about the law, what he says it is & what one's conscience tells one it should be. (Not that I have one of these conscience things, but apparently the law still gives some latitude to those who invoke the word.)*

I suspect that despite my suppressed desire to tell the judge that I did indeed hold him & the entire system in contempt, neener neener, my admitting to being a diagnosed (also by an employee of the County of Los Angeles, coincidentally) crazy person was the determining factor in the A.D.A. dropping me as if I were hot (general non-bourgeois [toothless] appearance may have added to the crazy effect); the case involved finding (or not finding) that the respondent is a "Sexually Violent Predator" (as legally defined) & will therefore receive three hots & a cot at a State Hospital until a cure is achieved, hell freezes over or the stars fall from the sky, whichever may happen first, & the A.D.A. might have assumed I'd be opposed to that sort of thing on principle. (Oddly enough, I have few principles either, beyond the usual "don't get caught". And imagine the reaction had The People of The State of Calif. known I'd been 5150'd myself.)

A.D.A.'s mistake, however: If forced to serve (It was figured to take until 5 June!) I was already prejudiced toward throwing away the key to the hospital after the respondent was locked in. The sickening pervert (probably an abuse victim himself) didn't look as if anything good would happen to him were he to be released from custody, even if he could control his violent urges.
*A young (to me now "young" is anyone under 40-ish; this sovereign citizen was in the audience on the other side of the bulletproof [let's hope] glass & fence arrangement, while I, as a cool person, was in the jury box, so it wasn't easy to be more specific) person (of Asian extraction, speaking American-accented English, for the sociologists out there) mentioned jury nullification, which, the judge noted, was a'gin th' law. Hizzoner also dragged out the old Jack WebbSg't. Joe Friday chestnut that if you don't like a law you should write a letter to some elected buffoon politician somewhere about it, & until then just go along like the sheep you are. (Paraphrased & perhaps even extrapolated just a teeny-weeny bit.)
†All. One. Sentence: Tremble before my logorrhea!

2 comments:

OBS said...

I have to call in for jury doody soon. I hope I don't get picked, but if I do, I'll serve. I bet it won't be as interesting as your encounter.

M. Bouffant said...

Labor Editor:
Lemme tell ya, when I worked (for someone else for a living, don't think this isn't WORK) I was always ready for jury service. Now, unemployed, losing two wks. of my Golden Yrs. didn't look so good.