So I was on Jury duty this week.
Well actually they wasted my time. They never pick me. Why? Because. Because of a lot of reasons.
They don't want old people. They don't want conservatives. They don't want someone who hates lawyers. They don't want what they perceive as an "Angry white man." In NYC in 2011 I am a minority. I ain't bitching about it....it's just a fact. So they would never pick me and it is a complete waste of time.
Now it was funny because I was totally sympathetic to the defense's case and they should have fought hard to get me on the case. It was a DUI case but it was fucked up. The dude was driving down 4th Avenue and sped past the police station on 39th St. He had a few drinks and when they pulled him over he must have had an attitude as they piled on a bunch of charges like interfering in an investigation and disrespect to an officer or some such shit like that there. Plus the guy was an Arab!
Now you know my very low opinion of lawyers. I never thought that I could ever think less of them. I was wrong.
The prosecuter was a Smiley Chinese dude who had some issues with English. He was grinning through the whole case to the point that I could make about seventy jokes about but it just made you sigh. He couldn't get anything right and the judge kept correcting him as he was arguing his case in his questioning of the jury and generally fucking up. The worst of it was that there was another older white dude sitting next to me and when he was asking questions he kept calling the guy by my name! He couldn't even put the right name in the right seat on his little chart. I wanted to ask him "Excuse me Hop Sing but do all white guys look alike to you?" Of course you can't do that right? That would be racist right? It would get in you trouble right? There is no first amendment right? I mean not in NYC in 2011 there isn't. Just sayn'
What a douchenozzle. I mean he goes like this "This is a 2009 case. Now if you saw a movie in 2009 you might have forgotten some of the details? You can understand how people could forget?" So what is he telling us? That the cop witnesses (the only witnesses) might have forgotten what happened but we should convict Abdul anyway? WTF?
Now the defense attorney also missed a bet. I am sure I looked like a prime prosecution supporter because I am a big fat Irish looking guy with lots of cops in my family. But the opposite is really true. I know how fucked up most cops are in real life. I have no illusions. I know what happened. This guy was probably drunk and he was speeding and weaving down 4th Avenue. But he didn't get in an accident. He didn't hit anybody or anything. He didn't even run a light. Some midget cop pulled him over and got his balls twisted and decided to run the guy in and fuck him up. It is almost a given. The defendant was a pretty big guy about six one and 280. My size. I have been in his shoes.
You see when they were questioning us about our attitudes about the police all the kids on the jury gave namby pamby answers. "Oh there are some bad apples but most of them are just doing a job." "I have had some bad experiences with the police but I could be objective." What a crock of bullshit. When they asked me I said 'Well they made a big mistake when they lowered the height requirement. There is nothing worse than a midget cop. A napoleon is not just a pastry you know." Even the Cynthia McKinney judge laughed at that one.
They excluded the three people over fifty. The older Jewish woman who was a writer and a real liberal who complained about a ticket. The transplant from LA who was a screenwriter who moved to Williamsburg and talked about the problems with the bikes and stuff in his neighborhood. He was one of your card carrying NPR, PBS, Oliver Stone types. And me.
The common denominator was not political views. Left or right. It was that we had life experience and weren't intimidated by the lawyers. You see lawyers are bullies. They picked kids in their twenties or younger. People they could push around. Not somebody that might lead the jury to a verdict that they didn't want. And that was a real mistake by the defense because I would have done all I could to get the guy off. And the way some of the younger kids laughed at the stuff I said and reacted when we were waitng to go back in the courtroom I was pretty confident I could have gotten them to get Ackbar off.
The only thing worse than a jounalist is a lawyer.
