Jury duty

I had jury duty this past Monday. While I wasn't eager, I was resigned, but I also figured a liberal college professor wasn't going to be too high on any attorney's idea of the perfect juror.

We had to be at the county court house by 9:30. There were well over 100 of us, milling around on the 3rd floor, fanning ourselves in the unair-conditioned waiting area.

It's funny, but I had sort of dressed up--skirt, shirt, sandals with heels, make-up. Others did not feel that need. Lots of tee-shirts and flip-flops. I was sitting on the stairs, along with about 15 or so others, so I could watch the group as we waited to find out what was going to happen. I laughed aloud when I saw a woman in cropped pants and a tee-shirt that read "I have multiple personalities and none of them likes you." I had to wonder if she has picked that shirt to send a message to the attorneys so she wouldn't get picked or if it just happened to be clean and she didn't think anything about it. She disappeared after a while, so I don't know what her story was.

After about a 45 minute wait, we were herded into an air-conditioned court room where we were told what to expect. We were all selected to go through the voir dire process, and anyone who absolutely couldn't serve had to go up and tell the judge. A lot of folks lined up. Fortunately, I had brought a book (when would I not bring a book?), because this took another hour. Then we were told to come back in just under 2 hours for the voir dire.

When we all came back, there was more waiting, but finally we were told to line up outside another courtroom where our names were called in random order and we were assigned numbers. I was #42.

The voir dire process takes forever as the prosecutor asked every single one of the 106 people there whether or not we could be impartial. It was a sexual assault case. I used to be a rape crisis counselor. I had to say no, I could not be impartial. That guy was guilty, guilty, guilty. How do I know? Because the majority of women who are sexually assaulted don't choose to press charges. If they press charges, they may drop them once they find out what an ordeal the trial is going to be for them. Then the district attorney has to feel like he has a strong chance of winning the case. And then the case has to go before a grand jury for indictment. And there was a detail of the assault that was icky and that no woman would make up. So I knew that man was guilty, without a shadow of a doubt. And there was no way I could be impartial.

I also had to say that I would never agree to a probated sentence should the guy be found guilty. Nope. Jail time for sure.

I was surprised at the number of folks who wanted to be picked for jury duty. I wasn't surprised at the number of folks that were sort of dim. My populist point of view got tested.

What I found interesting was how similar the pedagogy that attorneys have to employ is to what I do as both the prosecution and the defense struggled to frame questions that would elicit good answers without leading the jury pool to the answers they wanted.

We were dismissed at around 5:30, just in time for a powerful thunder storm. I got soaked, but I was very happy not to have to go back the next day for the trial.

However, a couple of nights later I ran into a friend who's a jury selection consultant, and he told me that the prosecutor did such a lousy job that the guy was found not guilty, so now I feel like I should have lied or something so I could have pushed to convict the man anyway. The young woman is, of course, devastated, and her family is beside themselves with grief and anger.

It ain't right.

Fear and trembling and Sarah Palin

I begin with a photo from the great Andre Kertesz to soothe me. It has two things that soothe me: one is that it's set in France, and I love France. The second is that there's someone reading on the other side of the window, and I love reading.

I need to be soothed because I'm anxious about the presidential race. I know, I know. Obama is ahead in the polls. But I don't trust McCain, the Republicans, and I've already described my terror in the face of Sarah Palin. And God help us, now she's resorted to winks and nose wrinkles. Mean girls flourished in high school and never got caught. Why should that change now? Civilization as we know it is doomed.

I watched the debate between Biden and Palin, and certainly Biden won, but this isn't UIL debate competition, now, is it? It's an ideological tug of war, and I don't have the kind of faith that can help me believe that the left will pull as hard as the right. And I know the right will do anything--and I mean anything--to get their side in the White House. I'm afraid that in a couple of weeks we'll be wishing that mud were the only thing flying.

At the end of the last presidential election, M and I escaped into books--the ripping yarns of Patrick O'Brien to be exact, and we read our way through the entire lot of them, sad to see them end.

I escaped a bit early this year into a WWII spy novel (Blood of Victory by Alan Furst--not as ripping a yarn as O'Brien, but plenty absorbing) just because I find Palin so upsetting and because I'm really worried that there's something seriously wrong with McCain. I've read that the older we get, the less our social filters work, and that's why old people can be heard to say things like "How'd you get so fat?" or "Is your friend ever going to go home?" Seeing his public performances lately, I'm thinking his filters are going fast.

I wish he could see that he's not the ideal personality type to be president (dear god, I agree with George Will about something!), but egotistical men in the military and politics are not oddities, and I can sort of understand it. But, for the life of me, I cannot see how Palin can see herself as ready to be president. I didn't even see myself as a good fit to be head of my department! And I've got the experience to do it.

I don't understand anything.

Except a good book. I need to collect a comforting pile.