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Wednesday, May 07, 2008

Juror No. 2: Excused

Yesterday concluded my first ever jury duty experience. I'd been sent a notice for it in the past, but never had to report. This time was different. Not only did I have to report, I was assigned a case and made it into the jury box! Unfortunately, the prosecuting (district) attorney didn't like me, so I was excused.

Most people want to be excused; hell, most people don't even want to show up. I was in this boat for most of the experience, until I realised who the defending attorney was: Mark Geragos - hi-priced defender of the stars. And while the defendant in this case wasn't particularly famous, Mark, for me, was close enough. It would have been really interesting to see how he worked; almost like watching Kobe Bryant or Tiger Woods.

While I wasn't in the court room for very long, I was there long enough to get a sense of how things would go. Geragos was good: eloquent, charismatic, charming. Just in jury questioning the stark difference between the Geragos and the DA was apparent. You could tell that if the DA didn't have all of his ducks in a row, he didn't stand a chance. And it's unfortunate, because it made me realise that in a lot of ways our criminal justice system is really a game. Proving reasonable doubt to 12 people is tough, especially when they're using their intuition to decipher truth. To top it off, they have to operate within the rule-box of the judge; it's not unfathomable to see how a guilty person could go free.

But alas, such conclusions are speculatory at best, as I never even made it to the trial.

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