Jury selection - wow!
The honorable Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. recently told House members if Osama bin Laden is found, “…we will be reading Miranda rights to a corpse.” A heart warming legal statement that clearly illustrates the complexity and subtle nuances of the U.S. justice system.
To test your knowledge of our legal system, where does the phrase, “by a jury of your peers” come from?
a. Standard marriage vows, right after the bride says, “…and if I catch you, you’ll be singing soprano without a trial by …”
b. Miranda rights (Chicago’s Southside version) just after, “If you cannot find an attorney, we’ll beat you with this rubber hose.”
c. In the U.S. Constitution between “Four score and seven years ago…” and “With liberty and justice for all.”
d. In the Magna Carta, arguably, the messiest examples of pre-medieval penmanship but giving us “writ of habeas corpus,” a rock group from Miami.
No, silly! Those lines are from the epic movie, “Gone With the Wind” not the U.S. Constitution! It was the Magna Carta, which, I quite honestly thought related to Christopher Columbus or possibly my microwave’s warranty. My point is, with rampant judicial system confusion, almost anyone could end up on a jury — for example, my wife.
She got a jury duty summons the other day but I told her, “It’s a snap to avoid jury duty. Just call in, cough a bunch, and claim you’re bedridden with Ebola or, if that doesn’t work, leprosy.” She replied, “No, it’s my civic duty and as long as I can breath I’ll not fail my country.” She might have actually been talking about leftovers for dinner – I rarely listen to what she says.
Today was the big day (Note: This won’t be printed on the day I write this, which seems rather surreal in a “You flushed WHAT down the toilet?!” kind of way.). To know my wife is to know what African pigmies call, “gulappo sumatto” or literally, “She’s crazy! Make her quit cleaning our huts!” She likes things neat and orderly so the whole, “show up and sit around for hours to see if you’re jury material and then maybe sacrifice the rest of your week listening to a trial seated on a chair who’s former occupant had an unidentified crotch fungus” really wasn’t working for her. But as a civic patriot, off she went.
All I know about jury selection comes from John Gresham’s book, “Runaway Jury” where hanky panky transpires involving large sums of money if votes are cast a certain way. Sure, I wanted a scandal-free local trial but I still made it clear, as I thumbed through tool catalogs that my wife was to be “real” convivial. She just rolled her eyes — a chronic condition contracted from living with someone who rarely distinguishes between reality and fiction.
Calling me midmorning, so far she’d made alternate. I asked if the defendant had a compulsive cleaning disorder. After all, that’s my wife’s peer group. She rolled her eyes over the phone.
Around noon, I got another call. After hours of picking, flaunting, and probing, a jury was seated (Which is legal jargon — it’s okay if you don’t get it.). The wife was still an alternate; I pulled out the tool catalogs.
Then, to make the entire group feel, “Hey, we’d like raw chicken livers for lunch,” the judge dismissed the trial. Seems the arresting office followed the accused DUI suspect in his patrol car with the headlights off (This happens a lot in L.A.) and apparently you can’t convict someone if the accuser is also breaking the law. But that just demonstrated the complexity of our judicial system, which is a crying shame because I’d picked out a really cool ½” drill.