Jury duty (I served on Monday and am on call the rest of the week) is all about narrative. Everyone has a story to tell, most of all the defendant, or, specifically, the attorneys representing the accused.
The most common narrative about the jury system is that it is a burden and it is a circumstance to be avoided more than highway rush hour in the rain.
Many colleagues approached me with ways to avoid jury duty. Say you’re quick to make decisions. Say you’ve been a victim of crime. Say you’re fearful of criminals.
No one in the office advised me to call anyone involved in the criminal justice system a moron or say that jury duty was a waste of time – though the tactic worked for one Montana man.
Avoidance of jury duty has spawned books, Web sites and laws. Some governments will ask you to serve – even if you’re dead. Some jurors commit fashion crimes when they arrive. Other potential jurors say they’ll use the opportunity as a legal soapbox to practice jury nullification.
I haven’t been in the courtroom this go-round but know that the questioning will revolve, to some extent, around what I know about the case and the people involved. Less is more, to the inquisitors. As Mark Twain described it:
We have a criminal jury system which is superior to any in the world; and its efficiency is only marred by the difficulty of finding twelve men every day who don’t know anything and can’t read.
Or who don’t mind being there.
