I paid my debt to society by reporting in for jury duty today. Jury duty is worse than losing a limb. In my experience, if you pick 12 Americans at random, you get nine good, clear-thinking citizens and three people who are like, “Well, anything’s possible.”
For example, the last time I served on a jury, the case involved a defendant who was driving drunk and crashed a car with passengers into a tree. There were photos taken after the crash showing the defendant pinned behind the steering wheel of the car.
His defense? He wasn’t the person driving the car. He didn’t testify himself but that was the defense presented by his attorney. And three of the jurors were like, “Yeah, that’s possible.” Hung jury.
Today I survived three rounds of random juror calls in the morning and by lunchtime they started calling names of people to go home, including mine.
The people still left in the jury assembly room didn’t appreciate my exuberant fist pumps on my way out.
In the hallway, I crossed paths with some actual jurors on their way to the cafeteria.
“Let justice be done though the heavens fall!” I exclaimed. They didn’t appreciate me either.