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… Read more →
EppsNet Archive: Jury Duty
The People v. O.J. Simpson
There’s a miniseries coming out called The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story. I’m not going to watch it, not for any singular reason — I don’t watch other TV shows either — but I don’t remember the Simpson trial having a great deal of entertainment value. The trial proved beyond a reasonable doubt that Simpson was guilty, even though a guilty verdict was not returned. Eight of the 12 trial jurors were black women. The prosecution believed that the jurors would identify with the female victim. The defense team believed that the jurors would identify with the black murderer. The defense was right. Conventional wisdom says that anyone who can’t get out of a lengthy term of jury service is not very bright. Only two of the Simpson jurors had a college degree. One never finished high school. The prosecution bored and confused them with DNA evidence. The… Read more →
Let’s Get Drunk and See How Fast We Can Drive My Expensive Car
According to the California Highway Patrol, [Kurt Duncan] Naegele, [Ryan Robert] Doheny, Doheny’s brother-in-law Darren William Dahlman, 38, of Pasadena, and Christopher H. Pennell of Los Angeles, had been drinking as guests invited to a birthday party on the San Simeon ranch on Sept. 18, 2009. They drove to the airstrip to find out how fast Naegele’s Range Rover could go, something a CHP investigator claims Doheny later told him was a bad idea because it was pitch black out and Naegele was driving very fast and erratically. Around 11 p.m., the Range Rover rolled several times before falling down a steep embankment 300 feet off the runway on the north side of the airstrip. The crash killed Dahlman, seriously injured Naegele (who had to be extricated from behind the steering wheel) and also injured Pennell and Doheny. Naegele and Doheny estimated to officers that they had been traveling 35… Read more →
Jury Duty
I had jury duty last week. Jury duty is the worst thing in the world, except for maybe losing a limb. Read more →