Okay, so today was my first time to ever serve jury duty. I’ve been called before. But not very often. And have never actually had to report. This time I made a critical tactical error in showing up early. They just had us sit in order of appearance. And they only needed six jurors. I was lucky number 7. And the only woman in the front row. If I wasn’t sporting a Mohawk or wearing a “Roswell is for illegal aliens” t-shirt, I was pretty much going to get tagged. It’s all good. I wanted to actually see how it went down.
Not that the traffic violation we heard was the crime of the century. And not a supervillain defendant either. If you’re going to actually fight a traffic ticket (chose to fight a traffic ticket, I should say, cause you could just pay the fine), it would behoove you to show up on time. Not 15 minutes into voir dire (and I just lurv using the legal terminology – sustained!). Second, one might choose to not show up in a t-shirt with a giant skull on it. And it cannot have escaped this guy’s notice that he is a black man. I’m not saying it’s right. I’m just saying. Even Lindsay Lohan dresses for court.
So, anyway, halfway through the trial, I have this total The Good Guys moment. The defense attorney is this good ol’ gal, who was really, really passionate about trying to get us to throw out the conviction based on the laser gun not being a reliable. She built a lousy case, but I got where she was trying to come from (Denny Crane she wasn’t). And she really put her back into it. A for effort. D for legal argument. But as she kept arguing, her accent kept getting more and more twangy. And eventually, she referred to the “laser machine.” I kid you not. And she did it again! That’s just not fair. I nearly lost it in open court. Evidently, no on told her the correct legal terminology is that “speedin’ doohickey.”
Anyhoodle. They let me be the presiding juror (yes, yes, thank you, it’s such an honor). And a good thing too. Because the guys on the jury would have sat around and chewed the fat over this one all afternoon (2 electrical engineers on that jury, no less). C’mon now. I let them circle the airport a little while, but we needed to land this bird. Guilty. $100 fine. That’s lunch.
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2 comments:
can't believe this was a trial case! thought it was judge-only for traffuc stuff, but maybe that is just MD/DC
Class C misdemeanor, guess it gets a jury trial. Maybe because it was a city ticket and not county? They took it really serious, though. We got thanked about a dozen times for our service. And if I'd been there all day, the 6 bucks would have covered lunch at the Sonic across the street.
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