(no subject)

[winterbadger]

Regular readers will remember the many times I have bewailed my inability, over decades of adulthood, to attract single jury summons in any of the dozen cities or counties I have lived in.

Such readers will also remember my getting a summons for the county court system earlier in the year, which ended in ignominious failure when I was excused and sent home after half a day of non-selection (not disqualification, mind you).

Well, fate has plans for me, apparently. Not only did I get a notification (to which I promptly replied) that I might be required for service in US District Court, but I have now received an official summons for jury service for the US District Court for the District of Maryland. I am required to appear each Tuesday in July until selected or excused. Pay is better ($40/day instead of $15) and they pay mileage too. That's by the by, of course. My real remuneration will be if I finally get to actually serve on a jury.

Comments

[wcg.livejournal.com]

Having served on a jury, I'll allow as it's not much fun. In my case it was a young man who'd stolen a car and gone joy riding. He had a lawyer who thought he could baffle us with bullshit, but we convicted[1]. Still, it's a damn shame to send an 18 year old to jail for being guilty but mostly stupid.

1. I think dad was wealthy enough to afford a lawyer, and figured he could sell a Texas jury on the "boys will be boys" argument. The defense lawyer even got all the black potential jurors dismissed during voir dire, so he was definitely trying to work the white man's privilege angle. But he'd gotten a jury of mechanics and truck drivers who weren't having any of that nonsense. (This being back when I was a student and a line mechanic in a dealership.)

[winterbadger]

Yeah, I'm not so much expecting it to be fun so much as felling it's something important and worthwhile to take part in that I think too many people belittle and avoid.

One can be stupid and still grasp the principle that one can't simply take other people's things without permission. Jail time is a little harsh if it was a first offense, but, well, we are talking about Texas, not a place I've the impression is liable to going easy on criminals.

[wcg.livejournal.com]

The judge gave him thirty days plus the balance of one years probation. We figured he would, but we couldn't do it ourselves. We suspected (correctly) that he had a juvenile record of similar nonsense, but we couldn't learn that until after the trial was over.

[schizokitty.livejournal.com]

Good luck on that! I know how you feel about serving -- it's both a duty and a privilege to serve my community this way (though I'd probably have to disqualify myself for anything hideous or violent because of my, um, emotional difficulties, sigh). We're all in this together, right? and we have to work together to keep our cummunity going. Too bad the teabaggers have completely forgotten this.

[winterbadger]

Yeah, I've come to the conclusion that what the teabaggers and all the perennial crowd of anti-Washington people really hate is not Washington's corrupting influence (though it does corrupt some, I think they are probably people who would be corrupted wherever they went). What they actually loathe is that when their representatives come to Washington, they often realise that in order to accomplish things, they need to *cooperate* and *work with others* to achieve common goals. What they can't do is simply dictate the single-minded, single-interest manifesto that some of their supporters want them to. If you want your congressman to get you X, sometimes he has to agree to get Y for the people in the EleventyHundredth District in Freedonia or he can't get his bill passed. Sometimes he talks to other congresspersons (and, yes, lobbyists--like the one your union or your church or your environmental group hires) and decides that the best thing to do is not what *you* want.

And _that_ is what the teabaggers hate. Compromise. Cooperation. Teamwork. Sacrifice. Because, like most libertarians, they are fundamentally selfish and hate they idea that they can't have their way about everything.