MY LAST EVER JURY DUTY
I can't find what I'd originally written, so this is a very mini-recap, written in September of 2001...
MY SECOND AND LAST (EVER) JURY DUTY
Ah, yes, that Fateful Spring of 1986, I got clobbered to serve on yet another jury in the U.S. Federal District Court in Alexandria. The remaining spec of belief in truth, justice, and humanity, onto which I fleetingly held, was about to be pulverized...
This time, however, the minute we adjourned to the deliberation room, I volunteered to be the Foreperson of the Jury and was immediately accepted as such. At least this time around there would be organization, fairness, leadership, and an attempt to allow even the meekest of jurors to voice an opinion.
A decade and a half later, all I care to remember and report right now is that there was an unjustly accused young man (teenager) who had gotten involved with the wrong crowd and was at the wrong place at the wrong time, and largely because of my influence, the facts in the case were actually involved and justice was served. The young man was found not guilty and was released to a very happy, relieved family.
This, by the way, was after taking an initial jury vote that was around 10 for "guilty" and just two of us for "not guilty", and at least one juror probably not even having the mental bandwidth to realize she was on a jury. Most of the original "guilty" assessments were based on prejudices against teenagers, though, so once again I had to deal with the bottom of the human gene pool and get around ingrained biases to be able to even get to the truth of the facts.
As you can see by subsequent times I was summoned for jury duty and all the excuses therefor, after this second jury duty, I vowed to myself that I would never again subject myself to that and fortunately, never have had to. Furthermore, I've vowed that no matter how guilty or innocent, if I were ever to be charged with a crime, I would fight to have just the judge determine my fate, because at least then I could hope for a chance of redemption from someone with a brain...
After the O.J. Simpson trial results, and some of the idiot judges in Florida giving custody rights to convicted murderers, however, I'm not so sure anymore that even judges are to be trusted. Sadly...